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Geokqe Stephen&on Studying the Engine. Page 145. 



HEROES AND MARTYRS 



OF 



INVEN^TION 



BY y^ 

GEORGE MAKEPEACE TOWLE 

AUTHOR OF " VASCO DA GAMA : HIS VOYAGES AND ADVENTURES " " PIZARRO : HIS 

ADVENTURES AND CONQUESTS" "MAGELLAN; OR, THE FIRST VOYAGE ROUND 

THE WORLD " "'■ MARCO POLO ; HIS TRAVELS AND ADVENTURES " " RALEIGH : 

HIS VOYAGES AND ADVENTURES " " DRAKE, THE SEA KING OF DEVON " 

"YOUNG PEOPLE'S HISTORY OF ENGLAND" ''YOUNG PEOPLE'S 

HISTORY OF IRELAND" "THE NATION IN A NUTSHELL" 




BOSTON MDCCCXC 
LEE AND SHEPARD PUBLISHERS 

10 MILK STREET NEXT "THE OLD SOUTH MEETING HOUSE" 

NEW YORK CHAS. T. DILLINGHAM 
718 AND 720 BliOADWAY 






Copyright, 1890, 
By Lee and Shepard. 



CONTENTS 



CHAPTER PAGE 

I. Early Inventors 7 

11. Laurence Coster, the Discoverer of 

TvPE-PRINTINa 23 

III. John Gutenberg, the Inventor of 

the Printing-Press 33 

IV. Palissy the Potter ....... 43 

V. William Lee, the Inventor of the 

Stocking-Frame 52 

VI. The Builders of the Eddystone . . 62 

VIL The Inventors of Cotton-Machinery, 71 
VIII. The Inventors of Cotton-Machinery, 

continued 84 

IX. James Watt, the Inventor of the 

Steam-Engine 103 

X. The Montgolfiers and the Balloon, 113 
XL Humphry Davy and the Safety- 
Lamp 123 

XII. James Nasmyth and the Steam- 

Hammer 132 



6 CONTENTS 

CHAPTER PAGE 

XIII. George Stephenson, the Inventor 

OF the Railway-Locomotive . . 141 

XIV. Eobert Stephenson, the great 

Bridge-Builder 151 

XV. Egbert Fulton and the Steam- 
boat 160 

XVI. The Struggles of Charles Good- 
year 170 

XVII. Elias Howe and the Sewing- 

Machine 180 

XVIII. Iron and its Workers 190 



HEROES AND MARTYRS OF 
INVENTION 



CHAPTER I 

EARLY INVENTORS 
A N IMPOSING CEREMONY tOok pkCG not 

long ago in the ancient historic city of 
Syracuse, in the Island of Sicily. A tardy 
statue was raised by the Syracusans to their 
most famous man, who has been two thou- 
sand years in his grave. 

The statue looks out upon the purple waters 
of the beautiful bay, which, nearly two cent- 
uries before Christ, Avitnessed some of those 
signal triumphs of science, which have ren- 
dered the name of Archimedes forever illus- 
trious. 

In the authentic history of invention, in- 
deed, the name of Archimedes stands earliest 



8 HEROES AND MARTYRS OF INVENTION 

and first. No doubt there were many invent- 
ors;, and great inventors, before his time ; but 
Archimedes is the first known inventor whose 
astonishing labors have come down to us in 
clear and trustworthy narrative. He is, there- 
fore, entitled to be called the patriarch of 
science. 

And the more we learn of this wonderful 
Syracusan, the more we marvel at the in- 
genuity of his genius, and the creative power 
of his intellect. He is declared to have been 
equally skilled in all the sciences ; in astron- 
omy and geometry, in hydrostatics, dynam- 
ics, and optics. He was the parent of the 
art of civil engineering. He was the author 
of a great number of precious inventions. He 
established the modern system of measuring 
curved surfaces and solids. 

He was the first to prove the important fact 
^Hhat a body plunged into a fluid loses as 
much of its weight as is equal to the weight 
of an equal volume of the fluid." The way 



EARLY mVENTORS 9 

in which he discovered this principle is 
curious and interesting. 

His cousin, Hiero^ King of Syracuse, wish- 
ing to make an offering to the gods of a 
golden crown, ordered a certain goldsmith to 
make one for him. It was soon found, how- 
ever, that the goldsmith had dishonestly made 
part of the crown of silver. Hiero called 
upon Archimedes to find out how much silver 
had been inserted in the crown. 

The philosopher was perplexed; but one 
day, while taking a brimming bath, Archime- 
des observed that the quantity of water which 
overflowed was just equal to the bulk of his 
own body. Leaping out of the bath, he ran 
homeward, exultantly crying : " Eureka ! I 
have found it ! " 

He now made two masses, one of gold and 
one of silver. Filling a vessel brim full of 
water, he alternately inserted in it the gold 
and the silver mass. He thus found the 
measures of water which answered to a cer- 



10 HEROES AND MARTYRS OF INVENTION 

tain quantity of each of the two metals ; 
thereby proved the comparative weight of 
gold and of silver ; and was able to show just 
how much of the baser metal had been in- 
serted in the golden crown. 

The whole life of Archimedes was romantic. 
His scientific triumphs were striking and bril- 
liant, and the influence of his absorbing labors 
was marked and enduring upon the progress 
of the human race. His most noted achieve- 
ment, perhaps, was the part he took in de- 
fending his native Syracuse from the assault 
of the Romans under Marcellus. 

The city was sore besieged by the Roman 
galleys. It seemed as if nothing could avert 
its doom. 

" The vigorous attempts made by Marcellus 
to carry Syracuse by storm," says Livy, the 
Roman historian, " had certainly sooner suc- 
ceeded but for the interposition of one man, 
Archimedes ; famous for his skill in astron- 
omy, but still more so for his surprising in- 



EARLY INVENTORS 11 

vention of warlike machines. By tliese^ in 
an instant^ lie destroyed what had cost his 
enemy vast labor to construct. Against the 
Roman vessels, which came up close to the 
city, he contrived a kind of crow or crane, 
projected above the battlements, with an iron 
grapple attached to a strong chain. This was 
let down on the prow of a ship, and, by 
means of the weight of a heavy counterpoise 
of lead, it raised up the prow, and set the 
vessel upright on her end." 

Another story, the truth of which was long 
doubted by philosophers, but the probability 
of which has been shown by the later dis- 
coveries of science, is, that Archimedes set 
the Roman ships on fire by means of mirrors. 
When the ships were within bow-shot of the 
shore, Archimedes placed some hexagonal 
and smaller mirrors, each at a proper 
distance, opposite the sun, and moved them 
by means of hinges and metal plates. 
Directed upon the ships, these were set on 



12 HEROES AND MARTYRS OF INVENTION 

fire, and were burned as if by the operation 
of maGric. 

The possibility of this remarkable feat of 
science has since been many times shown. It 
is asserted that in the sixth century a famous 
man of science, Proclus, set fire to the Thra- 
cian fleet in the harbor of Constantinople, by 
means of mirrors made of brass. In the last 
century, the great French naturalist, Buffon, 
repeated with success the exploit attributed 
to Archimedes at Syracuse. Buffon, with his 
apparatus of mirrors, set fire to planks at a 
distance of two hundred feet, and melted 
metals and minerals at a distance of forty 
feet. 

In our own day, the problem how to use 
the heat of the sun by mechanical agency 
is one of the most absorbing objects of the 
search of natural philosophers. One of these 
has recently been bold enough to assert that 
on any space in the United States, twenty by 
thirty miles square, enough of the heat of 



EARLY INVENTORS 13 

the sun is wasted to drive all the steam 
engines in the world. 

In spite of the well-nigh superhuman 
efforts of Archimedes in behalf of the proud 
and lovely city of his birth^ it was at length 
carried by surprise by the Roman legions. 
As the exultant victors swarmed through the 
streets, they found Archimedes quietly seated 
in the public square. 

His head was bent, and he was deeply 
studying a series of geometrical figures, which 
he had just traced in the sand. He did not 
seem to be conscious that the city had been 
captured, or that the Romans had invaded its 
streets. A Roman soldier, not knowing who 
he was, ran up to the absorbed philosopher 
with a drawn sword. Archimedes perceived 
his murderous intent'. 

" Hold your hand a little," said he quietly, 
glancing at the figures in the sand ; " only 
spare my life until I have solved this problem." 

But the petition fell on heedless ears; 



14 HEROES AND MARTYKS OF INVENTION 

and this greatest man of his age perished by 
the hand of the rude barbarian. Archimedes 
was bm^ied with imposing funeral pomp. 

Upon his tombstone^, in accordance with 
his own desire, was engraved a cylinder bear- 
ing a sphere ; a device which represented his 
discovery of the proportion between a cylin- 
der and a sphere of the same diameter. 

But in the hurly-burly of the time he was 
soon, and for long, forgotten. A hundred 
and fifty years later, Cicero, wandering in 
Syracuse, found the tombstone, neglected, 
lost sight of, and overgrown with weeds and 
thistles. 

And now, at last, in the nineteenth century, 
Syracuse has remembered her illustrious 
ancient citizen, and has fittingly reared a 
statue to his memory. 

In his great lecture on " The Lost Arts," 
Wendell Phillips described many inventions 
the knowledge of which had become extinct, 
though the products of those lost inventions 



EARLY INVENTORS 15 

still survive. He told of others which^ hav- 
ing become extinct; had been again revived 
in later ages. 

The re-discovery of ancient and once lost 
artS; indeed; is a striking phase of the history 
of mediaeval and modern invention. Many of 
the most signal scientific triumphs of later 
times were known at periods concerning which 
only dim traditions remain. 

Some of the uses of steam were known to 
the ancientS; who employed it to grind drugs, 
to turn spitS; and to amuse and to terrify the 
common people. It is stated by antiquaries 
that the Romans knew the art of printing ; 
but opposed the practice of it, because it 
deprived the scribes of their avocation. 
Certain it is that the Romans made imprints 
upon their pottery by means of stereotypes. 

Printing was known to the Chinese in 
remote antiquity ; and lithography had been 
a familiar German art three centuries before 
its re-discovery less than a hundred years ago. 



16 HEROES AND MARTYRS OF INVENTION 

The Romans quite understood the properties 
of gunpowder ; but rather played and trifled 
with it^ as they did with steam^ than put it 
to any useful service. As they made steam a 
bugbear ;, so they used gunpowder mainly for 
fireworks. 

It is certain that Colt's revolver is only a 
re-discovery of an ancient weapon ; for in the 
Arsenal of Venice you may see not only 
revolvers^ but rifled muskets and breech-load- 
ing cannon, which were made and used in the 
fifteenth century. 

Locomotion by steam was attempted by 
Blasco da Garay^ in the harbor of Barcelona, 
two centuries and a half before Robert Fulton 
guided the famous ^^ Clermont" up the Hud- 
son. Dr. Darwin predicted the locomotive 
and the steamboat, a quarter of a century 
before Fulton's memorable trip, in the oft- 
quoted lines, — 

" Soon shall thy arm, unconquered steam ! afar 
Drag the slow barge, and drive the rapid car ! " 



EARLY INYENTORS 17 

When the tunnel was built beneath the 
Thames, it was believed to be indeed a new 
thing under the sun ; a marvel of modern 
engineering skill. But it was afterwards 
found that tunnels had been laid beneath the 
waters of the Euphrates at ancient Babylon. 
The Romans built excellent macadamized 
roads. The idea of the Congreve rocket was 
borrowed by its re-inventor from the ingen- 
ious arsenals of Hindostan. The Chinese, 
ages ago, lit their houses with coal-gas. 

If there is any modern discovery to which 
we should be most strongly tempted to attrib- 
ute absolute originality, it would be that of 
the anaesthetic properties and uses of ether. 
But in the works of Albertus Magnus, who 
lived in the thirteenth century, — in the 
midst of the hurly-burly of the Crusades, — 
you will find a good practical recipe for pre- 
paring ether as an anaesthetic. The same 
principle, indeed, was known to many ancient 
peoples. In the far East, nepenthe and man- 



18 HEROES AND MARTYRS OF IN\T:XTI0N' 

dragora were* used to deaden pain. To a 
similar purpose the Chinese put mayo, and 
the Egyptians their soothing and seductive 
hasheesh. 

It was supposed that glass was a discovery 
of mediseval times, until specimens of it 
were found in the more elegant of the lava- 
buried villas of Pompeii. 

We must abandon, too, the proud and 
cherished belief that the electric telegraph 
was the original device of an illustrious 
American of the nineteenth century. " The 
invention of the telegraph," says a recent 
English scientific writer, ^^^was clearly indi- 
cated by Schwenter in 1636. He then 
pointed out how two persons could communi- 
cate with each other by means of the mag- 
netic needle." A century later, in 1746, 
Le Mounier exhibited a series of experiments 
in the Royal Gardens at Paris, showing how 
electricity could be transmitted through iron 
wire nine hundred fathoms in length. 



EARLY INVENTORS 19 

But a real electric telegraph was actually 
set to work, in 1774, by Le Sage of Geneva. 
His instrument comprised twenty-four metal- 
lic wires, separated and enclosed in a non- 
conducting substance. Each wire ended in 
a stalk, mounted with a little ball of elder- 
wood, suspended by a silk thread. A slight 
stream of electricity was sent through the 
wire ; the elder ball at the other end was 
repelled ; and this repulsion indicated a letter 
of the alphabet. 

A device very much like that of Le Sage 
was invented a few years later by Lomond of 
Paris. 

The discovery that the sun can paint pic- 
tures on a plate prepared with certain chemi- 
cals, can by no means be justly claimed by 
Monsieur Daguerre, although he gave his 
name to the daguerreotype. To the renowned 
artist who, four centuries ago, decorated the 
walls of the stately Refectory at Milan with 
his splendid picture of " The Last Supper," 



20 HEROES AND MARTYRS OF INVENTION 

who contended with Michael Angelo for the 
artistic sceptre of Florence, and who was not 
only a painter and sculptor of the highest 
genius, but was also a noted chemist, a suc- 
cessful engineer, a melodious poet, a graceful 
musician, and an ardent astronomer; to 
Leonardo da Vinci the world perhaps owes 
the great idea of photography, which has 
given so much aid to science, and so much 
pleasure, instruction, and delight to all man- 
kind. 

Six hundred years ago, old Friar Bacon 
taught his countrymen that many of the 
wonders which, in their ignorance, they 
attributed to sorcery, to the machinations of 
the Evil One, to the weird agency of ghosts 
and witches, were really works of nature, or 
of skilful human art. 

It is almost startling, indeed, to see how 
this learned and far-seeing English monk, of 
an almost barbaric period, imagined and 
clearly foreshadowed some of the greatest 



EARLY INVENTORS 21 

inventions of modern times. " Instruments 
may be made/' he says^ " by which the largest 
ships, with only one man guiding them, will 
be carried with greater swiftness than if they 
were full of sailors. Chariots may be built 
that will move with incredible rapidity, with- 
out the help of animals. Instruments of 
flying may be formed, in which a man, sitting 
at his ease, may beat the air with his artifi- 
cial wings, after the manner of birds. A 
small instrument may be made to raise 
and depress the greatest weights. An in- 
strument may be devised by which a man 
may draw a thousand men to him by force, 
and against their will. Machines can be 
constructed which will enable men to walk 
at the bottom of seas or rivers without 
danger." 

So it was that this bright morning star, 
rising in the dim dawn of modern science, 
shot its penetrating ray far athwart the 
shadows of the future ; and discerned, almost 



22 HEROES AND MARTYRS OF INVENTION 

clearly, locomotion by steam, the perfection 
of the principle of the lever, the sounding of 
the mysterious ocean depths by the diving- 
bell, and the successful navigation of the 
air. 



LAUKENCE COSTER ^ TYPE PRINTOTG 23 



CHAPTER II 

LAURENCE COSTER, THE DISCOVERER OF TYPE- 
PRINTING 

In Holland there is a very ancient town 
called Haarlem. It is a drowsy, humdrum 
old place, with quaint houses of many gables, 
and irregular grass-grown streets, and long 
reaches of straight, stagnant canals. Some of 
the streets are so narrow that you can shake 
hands with a passer-by on the opposite side- 
walk, and in some places the upper stories 
project so far over the lower ones that two 
people in opposite houses can easily converse 
with each other. 

On one of these streets stands a house which 
seems even older than most of its neighbors. 
It looks as if it were toppling over, and might 
fall down over the rough sidewalk any windy 



24 HEROES AKD MARTYRS OF INVENTION 

day. Its windows are full of tiny, dust-cov- 
ered panes^ and its single upper story so pro- 
jects as to form a shelter and shade over the 
doorway. This old house is pointed out to 
strangers who go to Haarlem to see the curi- 
osities of the venerable town as one of especial 
interest. It is said to be at least six or seven 
centuries old. But the reason why it is es- 
pecially worth seeing is that once upon a time, 
long, long ago, there dwelt in it a man of 
whom the sedate people of Haarlem are still 
very proud. His name was Laurence Coster. 
He was the warden of a little church w^iich 
stood not far from his modest dwelling, and 
passed his time between his not very heavy 
duties at the church and in the midst of his 
family at home. 

Among other tastes, Laurence Coster was 
very fond of reading. He lived, indeed, five 
hundred years ago ; and at that period, it need 
not be said, there were no printed books 
such as we have now. The only books which 



LAUKENCE COSTEE — TYPE-PKINTmG 25 

then existed were those written on parchment 
and vellum, and this was done mainly by the 
monks in their quiet monasteries. It fol- 
lowed that these written books were very 
rare and expensive. They were not to be 
found in the homes of the people. Even a 
great and rich lord could only afford to have 
a very few of them. They were as much of 
a luxury in a rich household as a picture by a 
famous artist is now. 

Of course, as books were so scarce and ex- 
pensive, very few of the common people ever 
learned how to read. But Laurence Coster 
was an exception to this rule. He had always 
been a great student^ fond of learning, and 
preferring solitude to the society of those 
around him. In the little church of which he 
was warden there were a few of the monks' 
manuscript volumes ; and these, we may well 
believe. Coster had read over and over until 
he must have well-nigh known them by heart. 

Thus Coster lived on to middle age, and 



26 HEROES AND MARTYRS OF INVENTION 

then to old age^ in ca quiet, humdrum, studious 
existence. He now found his little home 
peopled with quite a family. His son had 
married, and lived with him in the old 
house, and three or four rosy grandchildren 
delighted Coster's declining years. To give 
pleasure to these grandchildren, and to teach 
them what he himself knew, became the joy 
of his old age. 

Old Coster was very fond of strolling by 
himself in the outskirts of the quiet town. 
Sometimes, attired in his short seedy cloak, 
and a hat which was shaped like a sugar-loaf, 
and had a broad flapping brim, he would 
saunter along the banks of the slow little 
river Spaaren, which wound beyond the town. 
But his favorite haunt was a dense grove 
which stood a mile or two beyond the limits 
of Haarlem, and which was little resorted to 
by any one except himself. 

This grove had for many a year been a 
retreat to which Coster had loved to resort. 



LAUREIS-CE COSTER — TYPE -PRINTING 27 

When he had been a young man, full of senti- 
ment and romantic notions, he had gone out 
to it to dream of the fair maid of his love. 
Even now, in old age, he could find on one of 
the trees the letters which formed the initials 
of her name, which he had once fondly carved 
there when in a sentimental mood. 

In a different way this habit of carving 
letters in the bark of the trees still seemed to 
delight him. When of a languid summer 
afternoon he stretched himself out on the 
short soft moss beneath a beech-tree, he would 
almost unconsciously tear off some of the 
bark and begin to fashion letters from it with 
his knife. One day it occurred to him not 
only to carve the letters, but to cut them out, 
put them in his pocket, and carry them home. 
He thought that it would be the easiest possi- 
ble way to teach his little grandchildren their 
alphabet, and so in time enable them to read, 
if he showed them the letters in the form of 
playthings. 



28 HEROES AND MARTYRS OF INVENTION 

After a while this became a regular custom 
with him. He was delighted to see that the 
letters of bark greatly amused the children, 
and that they very soon learned to tell one 
from another. Then the old man became 
more careful and more skilful in carving the 
letters. He tried to fashion them as nicely 
and distinctly as possible, and spent more 
hours than ever in the grove, absorbed in this 
pleasant occupation, which was destined to 
make him famous. 

One afternoon Coster had been more than 
usually successful in cutting the letters out of 
the bark. His old eyes twinkled to see how 
neatly he had made them. He happened to 
have an old piece of parchment with him, and 
with this he carefully wrapped up the letters 
and carried them home in his pocket. 

The grandchildren, as usual, were watching 
eagerly for their dearly loved old grandsire, 
and as he approached, ran out to meet him 
and lead him by both hands into the house. 



LAURENCE COSTER- TYPE-PRINTING 29 

They clapped their hands with glee when he 
took the piece of parchment from his pockety 
and, unfolding it, showed them a number of 
prettier letters than they had ever seen be- 
fore. They at once took the letters, and vied 
with each other in pronouncing them, while 
the old man playfully corrected their mistakes. 
Meanwhile the old scrap of parchment had 
been thrown carelessly aside. But it hap- 
pened that one of the little boys, tired for the 
moment of playing with the letters, picked up 
the parchment and unfolded it. Then he 
cried out in wonder, '' Look, grandfather ! see 
what the letters have done ! " 

Coster took the parchment from the boy to 
see what he meant. His eyes dilated as he 
gazed upon the parchment. There, upon its 
surface, the letters had left a clear imprint. 
To be sure, the imprint represented the letters 
reversed, but nevertheless they were there, 
printed upon the parchment. It soon ap- 
peared that when Coster had carved the let- 



30 HEPwOES AND MARTYRS OF INVENTION 

ters the bark had been moist with the sap of 
the tree, and the sap had performed the ser- 
vice of ink. 

Old Coster, though a man in a humble 
sphere of life, was very far from being a dull 
one. His thoughtful, studious life enabled 
him to perceive that this printing of the bark 
letters on the parchment was really a great 
discovery. What if, by thus having a series 
of letters, and impressing them again and 
again upon parchment, books might be multi- 
plied and made cheap for all the w^orld ! 

Laurence Coster now had a new occupation 
in life, which absorbed all his hours and 
labors. By a mere accident, as it seemed, he 
had discovered the mighty art of pmiting with 
types. He went to the grove and cut more 
letters ; and then, using ink, pressed them 
upon a piece of parchment. He reversed the 
letters, and now they appeared properly 
placed upon the page. Then he formed 
words, and printed them also in the same 



LAURENCE COSTER — TYPE-PRINTrnG 31 

way. He next cut the letters, no longer from 
the fragile bark, but from the solid wood. 
He managed to invent a thicker, glutinous 
ink, which would not blur the page when im- 
pressed on the parchment. Then he cut his 
letters out of lead, and finally out of pewter. 

When his ignorant and superstitious neigh- 
bors heard what he was doing, some of them 
declared that he was a madman, while others 
darkly hinted that he was a sorcerer. After 
a while they annoyed him so much that he 
was forced to shut himself up and conceal his 
work from them ; and so he went on, month 
after month, striving to bring about the 
realization of the great art of printing, which 
he perceived to be possible. 

One day, while old Coster was thus busily 
at work, a sturdy German youth, with a 
knapsack slung across his back, trudged into 
Haarlem. By some chance this youth hap- 
pened to hear how the churchwarden was at 
work upon a wild scheme to print books in- 



32 HEROES AND MAKTYRS OF INVENTION 

stead of writing them. With beating heart 
the young man repaired to Coster's house, 
and made all haste to knock at the church- 
warden's humble door. Who this youth was, 
and what came of his visit to old Coster, will 
be told in the next chapter. 



JOHN GUTENBERG — PRIISrTING-PKESS 33 



CHAPTER III 



JOHN GUTENBERG, THE INVENTOR OF THE 
PRINTING-PRESS 



The sturdy young German who, with knap- 
sack on back and staff in hand, knocked at 
old Laurence Coster's door, was no ordinary 
youth. Although scarcely more than twenty, 
he had already seen a great deal of life, and 
even some of its rougher aspects. 

John Gutenberg belonged to a family of 
high degree, and had been reared in such 
luxury as could be enjoyed in the rude 
mediaeval time ; but he did not allow luxuri- 
ous living to make him indolent or unam- 
bitious. He was an ardent student, and had 
received the best training which the learned 
monks could give him. Often, when a boy, 
he was found poring over the manuscripts 



34 HEROES AND MARTYRS OF INVENTION 

which he found in the monasteries where he 
was educated. He was also very religious in 
thought and act. Many a time he would 
earnestly exclaim, what a pity it was that 
the Bible was a closed book to the masses of 
the people ; that, as it was written by hand 
on parchment, it could only be possessed 
either by the churches and monasteries or by 
very rich people. 

Gutenberg's home was at Strasburg, on the 
banks of the Rhine. He had often dreamed 
of foreign countries, and imagined what they 
and their peoples were like ; so one day, being 
strong of limb and active in exercise, he 
resolved to pack up his knapsack, attire him- 
self in walking costume, and take a long 
pedestrian tour. It was while on this jaunt 
that, by a chance for which all later genera- 
tions have had reason to be thankful, he 
heard of old Coster and his discovery, and 
hastened to present himself at the humble 
churchwarden's door. 



JOHN GUTENBERG — PRINTING-PKESS 35 

You can imagine the eagerness with which 
Coster led his young guest in^ and how 
delighted he was to show him just how the 
printing of his letters worked. While with 
his rude leaden types the old man pressed 
letter after letter on the parchment^, Guten- 
berg stood by, rapt in attention. Already 
he imagined that he saw dimly to what great 
uses this discovery might be put. 

" And see here ! " exclaimed Coster^ holding 
up some pages of parchment awkwardly 
sewed together^ "here is my first hook in 
prints 

It was a Latin grammar. Old Coster had 
slowly printed it^ letter by letter^ and right 
proud was he of this first triumph of his 
patient labor. 

*^^But we can do better than this/' said 
Gutenberg. " Your printing is even slower 
than the writing of the monks. From this 
day forth I will work upon this problem^ and 
not rest till I have solved it." 



36 HEROES AND MARTYES OF INVENTION 

Warmly grasping Coster's hand, and thank- 
ing him for showing him his discovery, 
Gutenberg resmned his knapsack, and trudged 
out of Haarlem. He had no longer any 
thought of continuing his tramp into new 
scenes. His fondness for seeing strange lands 
had for the wdiile deserted him. His only 
thought was to get back as soon as possible 
to Strasburg, where he lived, and to set to 
work upon the task he had now set to him- 
self. • 

Gutenberg lived in an age of dense super- 
stition and ignorance. Everything that was 
new and unfamiliar seemed to the ignorant 
people of that time to be the work of sorcery ; 
and any one who dared to do things which 
appeared marvellous in their eyes, was perse- 
cuted and pursued as if he dealt in evil magic. 
No one knew this better than the young 
Strasburg scholar. 

So, on his arrival at Strasburg, he gave out 
that he was at work making jew^elry. Mean- 



JOHN GUTENBERG — PRINTING-PEESS 37 

while he locked himself up in his room^ and, 
scarcely taking time to eat or sleep, devoted 
himself to the problem how to make Coster's 
discovery useful to the world. But he found 
that he was watched and interrupted, and 
that his hiding himself so constantly in his 
room gave rise to dark suspicions among his 
neighbors. So he repaired to an old ruined 
monastery, only one or two rooms of which 
were habitable, and which stood a few miles 
from the town. Here he thought he could 
work in peace, for the monastery ruin was in 
a lonely, deserted place. 

Hidden in an obscure corner of this old 
monastery of St. Arbogaste was a little cell. 
This cell Gutenberg secured by a great oaken 
door with heavy bolts, and here he hid the 
tools and materials needed for his work. At 
the same time he fitted up a half-ruined room 
in a more open part of the monastery as a 
jewelry shop. He engaged two young men 
to help him polish precious stones and to 



38 HEROES AND MARTYRS OF INVENTION 

repair trinkets. Tn this way he hoped to be 
able to work at his types in the hidden cell 
without discovery. 

He now set to work, at such times as he 
could escape into his little cell, in dead 
earnest. It was not long before he had 
carved out of some bits of wood with his 
knife a number of separate types. The happy 
idea struck him to string these on a piece of 
wire in the form of words, and at last of sen- 
tences. Then, finding that wood was not 
hard enough, he carved some types, with more 
difficulty, in lead. 

Having made types which satisfied him, 
Gutenberg used his knowledge of chemistry 
to make an ink which would leave a distinct 
imprint, and he soon succeeded in producing 
such an ink. As he continued to work, the 
great idea that was absorbing him grew more 
and more clear. He had his types and his 
ink, so he made a brush and a roller to put 
the ink on the types. He had now got as far 



JOHN GUTENBERG — PRINTING-PRESS 39 

as printing a whole word or sentence on a 
piece of parchment; and by changing the 
movable types about, could form at will new 
words and sentences. 

His next task was to construct ^^ chases/' 
so that the types could be held together^ and 
would print in pages. And at last the idea 
of a printing-press was made a reality. 

When Gutenberg had completed and 
gazed with delight on the first printing-press 
which had ever been constructed, the main 
difficulties of his task w^ere over. With his 
types set in their chases, his different colored 
inks at his elbow, his rollers at hand to apply 
the ink, and his press ready to press the types 
down upon the blank pages, he stood ready 
to complete the first book printed with 
movable type. 

But poor Gutenberg was not destined to 
derive much happiness from the results of his 
labors and the splendid invention he had 
made. He worked so hard that the few hours 



40 HEROES AND MARTTES OF INVENTION 

of the night which he took for sleep were dis- 
turbed by uneasy dreams. Sometimes he 
thought that angelic voices warned him not 
to go on with his printing, for that it would 
bring untold miseries upon the human race. 
Then he would rise in the morning, unre- 
freshed by his slumbers and terrified by the 
vision, and, seizing a mallet, would be on the 
point of smashing his printing-press all to 
pieces. But sometimes other spirits would 
appear to him in dreams, and urge him to go 
on with his good work, saying that it would 
be an immense blessing and benefit to all the 
world in all future ages. This would inspire 
him with new energy, and he would toil the 
next day with a light heart. 

But after the printing-press had been made, 
and he had really begun to print books, his 
assistants in the jewelry shoj) betrayed him. 
They told the magistrates of Strasburg aboiit 
his long absences and mysterious movements. 
Their story soon spread through the town, 



JOHN GUTENBERG— PRINTING-PEESS 41 

and roused the anger and hatred of the 
writers of manuscript books^ who feared lest 
printing should ruin their occupation. 

Gutenberg's enemies soon compelled him to 
fly from Strasburg. He was stripped of all 
he had in the worlds and even his life was 
threatened. So he went bacT^ to Mayence^ 
his birthplace, and there resumed his printing. 
He took a rich jeweller, Fust, into partner- 
ship. But he was not allowed to work long 
in peace. Fust turned against him, and he 
was soon forced to leave Mayence as he had 
left Strasburg. 

He was noAv wretchedly poor, and for a 
while roamed aimlessly from place to place. 
But at last he found a home in Nassau, the 
ruler of which offered him his protection. In 
that quiet town, Gutenberg set up his press 
again, and printed many books, and spent the 
remainder of his days, it is pleasant to say, in 
rest, comfort and content, although he never 
mt rich from his invention. He died in the 



42 HEROES AND MARTYRS OF INVENTION 

year 146 8, at the ripe age of sixty-nine ; and 
many years after the statue of him^ which 
may be seen standing in Mayence, was erected 
in his honor by the descendants of those who 
had driven him forth^ a beggar, from his 
native city. 



PALISSY THE POTTER 43 



CHAPTER IV 

PALISSY THE POTTER 

Ik the quaint old French village of Saintes 
there livedo more than three hundred years 
ago, a very strange, eccentric man. 

So mysterious were his ways that his 
neighbors, who were simple, ignorant coun- 
try folk, avoided and feared him. As he 
passed through the winding village street he 
was dressed so shabbily that he looked like a 
beggar. People who saw him for the first 
time half expected him to stop, put on a 
pleading face, and humbly ask for " one little 
sou." 

Yet, threadbare as he was, his air was not 
at all that of a beggar. He hurried along 
with a brisk step. His large brown eyes 
glistened brightly, and there was almost 



44 HEKOES AKD MARTYRS OF INVENTION 

always an eager smile upon his lips. He 
did not seem to be in the least conscious of 
his tatters ; and if he nodded to his neigh- 
bors^ and they turned their backs on him in 
reply, he went on smiling just as before. 

This peculiar man dwelt in an old cottage 
a little out of the more thickly settled part 
of the village. He had a pale, thin, sad- 
looking wife, and three or four children, w^ho 
looked as if they were far from being well 
fed. \Yhat was stranger still, he never 
liked to have any one enter his tumble-down 
cottage. It was clear to the village folk that 
he had some dark secret which he was very 
anxious to keep from all the world, and that 
he was afraid that if any one entered his door 
it would be discovered. 

Those were very ignorant, superstitious 
times, and when there was a mystery about 
any one, it was always attributed to some 
wickedness or some unholy art. As this man 
passed a group of villagers, they would look 



PALISSY THE POTTER 45 

at him f rowningly^ and would fall to whisper- 
ing to one another. 

^^He is a sorcerer/' one would mutter, 
" and makes witches' philters, and casts the 
Evil One's spells over people." 

" No," another one would say under his 
breath; "he is a coiner of false money. 
Look you : he has built a big furnace in the 
back of his house, and he keeps it ever 
a-roaring. You can see the smoke and 
sparks shooting up any time o' day. There 
he has his crucibles and chemical things, 
and he carries his false pieces of money away 
to the towns, and exchanges them for good, 
honest ware." 

Then perhaps a third, more kind-hearted 
than the others, would reprove his comrades, 
and, slowly shaking his head, would add : 
"No, the poor wretch is mad — clean gone 
mad. How else could the man, who is so 
poor, in rags, with wife and children always 
a-starving, go about with such bright eyes 



46 HEROES AND MAETYRS OF IKYENTION 

and so brave an air ? Be sure he is a mad- 
man. God help his poor family ! " 

But day after day the man went to and 
fro, and heeded not his neighbors' frowns and 
sneers, or their shrinking from him as he 
passed by. 

His name was Bernard Palissy, and his 
whole soul was wrapped up in one object, to 
which he sacrificed everything. 

If you had entered the poor little cottage, 
you would have indeed discovered just such 
a furnace as the villager described; and 
scattered about the room you would have 
seen a number of pots, pieces of clay, and 
various bottles and crucibles. It was true, 
too, that the furnace was always roaring 
with a big fire, which was kept constantly 
at red heat. 

But Palissy was not a sorcerer, and was 
not concocting any magic draught, or trying 
to turn the baser metals into gold. He was 
engaged in a work which he knew, if he sue- 



PALISSr THE POTTER 47 

ceeded in it^ would give him fame and wealth 
to his heart's content. 

Palissjj though of humble birth^ had 
picked up here and there a good deal of 
knowledge of chemistry and the qualities of 
minerals and ores. He had^ too^ a very 
ardent love of all beautiful objects. He had 
begun life as a surveyor, and had then 
learned to paint on glass. But though his 
work was good^ he did not succeed very well ; 
for, instead of attending to his business, he 
was studying and dreaming his time away. 

But an event happened one day which gave 
him a new purpose in life, and changed the 
whole current of his existence. While wan- 
dering about a neighboring town he chanced 
to spy in a shop window a very beautifully 
decorated cup. The fine polish and brilliant 
colors of the cup at once attracted his artistic 
eye ; and, though he was poor, he managed 
to scrape together enough money to buy it. 

This cup, which had been made in Italy, 



48 HEROES AND MARTYRS OF INVENTION 

absorbed his attention. He studied its every 
line and feature, and kept wondering and 
wondering how it received and could keep 
such a beautiful, smooth, glossy polish. No 
such cup could ever have been made in 
France. 

What if he could find the way to make 
beautiful ware like this ! Surely then his for- 
tune would be made, and his poor wife would 
wear Lyons silks, and his hungry little chil- 
dren would dine each day on ragouts and the 
best of fruits. 

Palissy abandoned everything to achieve 
this object which he now set before himself. 
No more surveying or glass-painting for him. 
He would discover for himself the art of 
enamelling, or die in the attempt. 

So, in the rear of his cottage, he built with 
his own hands the big, rude furnace, bought 
the chemicals which he thought necessary for 
his work, collected a supply of the right kind 
of clay, and resolutely set about his task. 



PALISSY THE POTTER 49 

For a long time he failed in every attempt to 
produce a bright enamel^ such as he found 
on the Italian cup. Meanwhile^ he grew 
poorer and poorer. His wife and children, 
poor things, scarcely got enough food to 
keep body and soul together. 

One morning, when Palissy's hope was 
high that he would soon be able to perfect 
the enamel, a workman, whom he had hired 
for a pittance to help him, declared that he 
would not stay another day unless the money 
which was due him was paid. Palissy gave 
him his last suit of clothes; but the man 
was not satisfied, and soon went away. 
Left thus alone, Palissy worked with more 
desperate energy than ever. But now the 
wood which he used for the fuel of his fur- 
nace gave out, and he had no money to buy 
any more. All his labor seemed about to 
become in vain ; for if the fire of the furnace 
went down, the enamel could not be made. 

Stung almost into despair, Palissy was 



50 HEROES AND MARTYRS OF INVENTION 

struck by a sudden idea. He rushed into his 
little garden, tore down the trellises which 
supported his few fruit-trees and grape-vines, 
and hurled them on the fading fire. Yet, 
alas ! the composition he had made and put 
into the furnace would not melt. The fire 
once more waned. Palissy then seized the 
chairs and tables, frantically broke them up, 
and cast them upon the flames. He tore the 
door from its hinges, the window-frames from 
their sockets, and piled them on the fire. 
Then seeing that the enamel did not yet melt, 
in his desperation he pulled up the very 
boards which formed the floor of the room, 
and added these to the roaring conflagration. 
As now he looked into the blazing fire, he of 
a sudden gave a wild shout of joy : '' Come 
hither, good wife ; come hither, my children ! " 
They hurried in, not knowing what to 
make of the frantic cry. As they entered 
the room where the furnace was, they saw 
Palissy, his face flushed with the heat, and 



PALISSY THE POTTER 51 

his eyes glistening with triumph^ standing by 
the furnace. He held up the vase which he 
. had just taken from it. It glittered with its 
dazzling polish and its beautiful colors. At 
last he had indeed discovered the secret of 
enamelling. The time of triumph and for- 
tune had come. 



52 HEROES AND MARTYRS OF INVENTION 



CHAPTER V 

WILLIAM LEEj THE INVENTOR OF THE 
^ STOCKING-FRAME 

Those wlio have strolled through the 
streets of the old town of Cambridge^ in 
England^ will not easily forget the many col- 
lege edifices which appear on every side, com- 
posing the ancient University. Many of 
these buildings are imposing and beautiful. 
They are adorned with numerous archi- 
tectural devices : with arches, gables, oriel 
windows, gargoyles, pinnacles, and other 
sculptural ornaments, and almost all of them 
bear the marks of great age. The air of the 
town is one of studious repose ; it seems a 
place well fitted for quiet study and for the 
pursuits of tranquil scholars. The old town 
has changed so little, moreover, in the prog- 



WILLIAM LEE — STOCKING-FRAME 53 

ress of time, that very much as it looks now 
it looked in the good Queen Elizabeth's time, 
three centuries ago. 

It was in the reign of Elizabeth that a 
young man named William Lee repaired to 
Cambridge to get an university education. 
Lee was a country lad who had been brought 
up on a large farm. From childhood he had 
been fond of study, and had had a craving for 
knowledge. He loved reading and learning 
far better than the active duties on his 
father's farm. All the time he was at the 
University he studied hard^ and at the end of 
his course had taken a high rank among his 
comrades. As a reward for his good scholar- 
ship he was given a " Fellowship." This pro- 
vided him with a small income, and enabled 
him to continue living at the University after 
graduating, still pursuing his studies there. 

Lee was one of those dreamy, thoughtful 
young men who care for little outside of their 
bookS; and, being much wrapped up in them, 



54 HEROES AND MARTYRS OF INVENTION 

learn but little of the ways of the busy world. 
He was not in the least what we call a 
" practical man." His life was absorbed in 
the love and pursuit of book knowledge. He 
was wholly unfitted for any other kind of 
work. His destiny seemed to be to live and 
die a college professor. 

And so he might have done if his fate had 
not led him astray into the paths of love. If 
he had not fallen in love, probably the world 
never would have heard of William Lee. He 
was fond of wandering through the pretty 
roads and hedge-bound lanes in the vicinity 
of Cambridge, taking a book with him on his 
jaunts, and sauntering dreamily along the 
paths, thinking of what he had been reading. 

It chanced that on one of these excursions 
he met a young country lass with such rosy 
cheeks and bright eyes that he was at once 
roused out of his reverie and attracted to her. 
His dreams now took another turn. He 
thought less of his books, and more of the 



WILLIAM LEE — STOCKING-FRAME 55 

maiden who had stirred his heart. She lived 
on a poor little farm some miles away from 
the town ; and Lee^, having succeeded in mak- 
ing her acquaintance^ betook himself more 
and more often to the modest cottage where 
she dwelt. To his delight^ his affection was 
soon returned ; and now many were the happy 
hours which he spent at his rosy-cheeked 
young lady-love's side. But there was one 
drawback to his pleasure, which greatly wor- 
ried him. The young girl's parents were 
very poor^ and it was her task to eke out the 
small family income by knitting stockings. 
She had her household duties to perform dur- 
ing the day, and so she was obliged to take 
up her knitting in the evenings. Oftentimes 
when Lee came she was so busy with her 
work that she could not talk to him. 

At last his patience was exhausted, and he 
proposed that they should get married. He 
thought that his income as a ^^ Fellow" 
would suffice for both, and he would be care- 



56 HEROES AND MARTYES OF INVENTION 

ful to keep his marriage secret. It was a law 
of the University that the Fellows should be 
unmarried men, and Lee saw that if his mar- 
riage were known he would lose his Fellow- 
ship and be thrown upon the world. 

So one morning they got married. But 
Lee's happiness was not long-enduring. His 
marriage was soon discovered, and he was 
abruptly expelled from his Fellowship in the 
University. Worse stilly when his father 
heard of the marriage^ he disowned poor 
William, who was now cast upon the world 
with his young wife without a penny. What 
should they do ? If they did not go to work, 
they must soon starve. Every day they grew 
poorer and more wretched. 

His young wife, who was very cheerful and 
industrious^, took up her knitting once more, 
in order to earn enough, if possible, to sup- 
port them. As for poor Lee, he was totally 
unfitted to do anything, and his pride was 
greatly hurt to sit idly by while his wife 



WILLIAM LEE — STOCKING-FRAME 57 

toiled patiently^ hour after hour, on her 
work. 

One day, as he sat watching her fingers 
busily plying the needles, a bright thought 
suddenly struck him. Could not a machine 
be somehow contrived which, imitating human 
fingers, would knit stockings ? If he could 
only devise such a machine, his wife would no 
longer have to work so hard, and perhaps it 
might even bring fortune to his poverty- 
stricken door. It seemed that there was 
something practical in the poor student after 
all. He set eagerly to work to realize his 
new idea. He studied such machines as he 
could find in his neighborhood. He made a 
great number of models, and was not dis- 
heartened when one after another failed to 
perform the task he had in view. But at last 
the day came when an actual working stock- 
ing-frame stood in the miserable little room 
which was all the home he had. He had suc- 
cessfully carried out the idea of imitating 



58 HEROES AN'D MARTYRS OF INVENTION 

fingers knitting, and to his joy he found 
himself now able to weave stockings on his 
machine finer in texture, and more rapidly, 
than those which were made with his wife's 
hands. 

It was not long before Lee's great invention 
became known far and wide. Queen Elizabeth 
heard of the silk stockings woven by Lee's 
frame, and, having received a pair, vowed that 
she would never wear cloth hose apy more, 
but would always thereafter wear woven silk 
stockings. The great ladies adopted the 
fashion, and Lee found himself raised at last 
above the galling poverty which he had suf- 
fered after his marriage. He established him- 
self at Calverton, not far from his native 
place, and for some time he did a thriving 
business. But so valuable was his machine 
that pretty soon unscrupulous men began to 
make machines like it, and so Lee lost much 
of the benefit of his invention. Though the 
proud Elizabeth was glad enough to wear the 



WILLIAM LEE — STOCKING-FRAME 59 

fine silk stockingSj she would not protect him 
against those who invaded his rights^ and 
when King James came to the throne he also 
refused to aid the inventor. 

But Lee, who had proved himself a far 
more energetic and able man than he had 
seemed to be in his studious days, was re- 
solved that he would continue the industry 
which he had created. So he packed up his 
machines and crossed over to France. There 
he was heartily welcomed by the great- 
hearted King Henry the Fourth, and by 
Sully, the king's wise and far-seeing minis- 
ter. Lee settled in the beau.tiful old town of 
Rouen, where he became so busy that he em- 
ployed nine men to help him weave stockings. 
His wife could now sit at home at ease and 
take care of their children. Happy days had 
dawned upon them, and it seemed as if their 
troubles had forever vanished. 

One day, however, the good king who had 
so generously befriended the English inventor 



60 HEROES AND MARTYRS OF INVENTION 

was murdered as he was riding in his car- 
riage. Lee was now forced to give up his 
establishment at Rouen, and sought obscurity 
and safety in Paris. There, it is said, he died 
in poverty and wretchedness before he had 
passed the middle years of life. Some of his 
workmen returned to England, and one of his 
apprentices, named Aston, set up a stocking 
factory in his own country, and established 
the weaving of stockings as a permanent 
industry of England. Thus Lee's invention 
proved to be of the greatest benefit to his 
native land, although he himself did not reap 
fortune from it. 

But happily his name was not forgotten. 
Some time after his death a curious painting 
was made of him watching his wife at her 
knitting. He was represented as wearing the 
costume of his college, and pointing to an 
iron stocking-frame, while his wife was busy 
with her needles at his side. On the picture 
was this quaint inscription: ^^In the year 



WILLIAM LEE — STOCKIKG-FRAME 61 

1589 the ingenious William Lee^ of St. John's 
College, Cambridge, devised this profitable 
art for stockings (but, being despised, went 
to France) ; yet of iron to himself, but to us 
and to others of gold ; in memory of whom 
this is here painted." The curious old picture 
long hung in the Stocking-weavers' Hall, in 
London, but has now disappeared. 

So lived, loved, worked, and died the 
modest scholar who gave to England one of 
her greatest industries, to create which he 
was inspired by his tender affection for his 
wife. 



62 HEROES AND MARTYRS OF INVENTION 



CHAPTER VI 

THE BUILDERS OF THE EDDYSTONE 

Among the world's greatest benefactors 
have been the patient and heroic men who, 
often at the peril of life, have reared light- 
houses on dangerous reefs. The lighthouse, 
standing lonely, quiet, and ever steadfast 
amid the restive turbulence of the sea, serves 
two useful purposes. It warns away the 
tempest-tossed sailor from the crags on 
which it stands, and it guides him toward 
the safe havens on the shore. Thus it con- 
verts what was once a perpetual danger of 
the ocean into an actual means of security 
and life. 

For many a century, a certain jagged reef 
of rocks which lies about twelve miles off the 
English coast, in the rough English Channel, 



THE BUILDERS OF THE EDDYSTONE 63 

was a terror to all the seamen who ap- 
proached it. Many a goodly craft had 
struck upon its jutting crags^ and had in an 
instant broken up and sunk to the bottom. 
Often hidden amid dense fogs^ the ships of the 
olden time could never make out just where it 
lay ; and each year it claimed and devoured 
its victims^ sometimes by the hundred, so that 
those near and dear to them never knew what 
had been their fate. 

The ocean, dashing in ceaseless breakers 
upon this hideous mass of rocks, breaks in 
circling eddies and whirlpools around them ; 
and from this circumstance the reef, ages 
ago, received the now famous name of the 
Eddystone. 

It was upon this terrible reef of the Eddy- 
stone that the first lighthouse which was ever 
built upon a rock at a distance from the 
mainland was erected ; and it is curious that 
the idea of putting a lighthouse there was 
conceived, not by a sailor or an engineer, not 



64 HEROES AND MARTYRS OF INVENTION 

by a man of science or by the government, 
but by a quiet, eccentric English country 
gentleman. About two centuries ago this 
gentleman, whose name was Henry Winstan- 
ley, was living at ease in his ancient manor- 
house in eastern England. Winstanley was 
a very queer, whimsical man. He was quite 
rich, and used his wealth in a very singular 
way. His neighbors, though they liked him 
for his good-nature and easy-going w^ays, 
thought that he was perhaps a little 
^'cracked." Winstanley, among other odd 
traits, w^as very fond of playing practical 
jokes. Indeed, he spent a good deal of his 
time and money in giving people sudden 
shocks and surprises. He filled his house 
and grounds, for instance, with all sorts of 
strange devices for this purpose. 

Yet it was this very man of strange w^liims 
and terrifying jokes, Henry Winstanley, who 
undertook the unheard-of feat of erecting a 
lighthouse on the tempest-riven reef of the 



THE BUILBEES OF THE EDDYSTONE 65 

Eddystone. Inspired by the noble idea of 
saving so many lives and so much property 
from the jaws of the great deep^, Winstanley 
abandoned his idle life and went to work 
with a will. He himself aided and superin- 
tended his workmen, giving up all his time 
and energies to the great work. For six 
years he toiled ceaselessly to finish it. He 
constantly braved the storms that ever swept 
around the dreadful reef ; more than once, 
bound to the rock, he came near starving ; 
and when the lighthouse had been reared, 
and was all but completed, he fell at last a 
victim to his noble design. 

One evening at dusk, Winstanley, with a 
party of his workmen, set out in a boat from 
Plymouth to put some finishing touches to 
the lighthouse. Just as he was starting, a 
friend, pointing to the gathering clouds, 
warned him that a storm was brewing, and 
begged him not to go. But Winstanley, 
in his reckless way^ replied, "1 only wish I 



66 HEROES AND MARTYRS OF INVENTION 

could be at the lighthouse in the greatest 
storm that ever blew under the face of the 
heavens." His wish was to be fulfilled 
sooner than he thought. As night closed in, 
the tower of the lighthouse could be dimly seen 
from the shore, rising proudly above the angry 
surge. But before the next morning dawned it 
had disappeared forever from human sight. 
The crags of the Eddystone rose grim, bleak, 
and bare from the swelling bosom of the sea. 
The brave Winstanley and all his men, and 
every stone, and buttress, and cable, and nail 
of his lighthouse — everything excepting 
only a single chain which remained riveted 
in the crevice of the rock — had been swept 
away. For all had gone down under the 
most terrific gale which had raged in the 
English Channel for many years. 

But the sad fate of Winstanley did not 
prevent other intrepid spirits from making 
fresh attempts to transform the Eddystone 
from an awful peril into a beacon of safety. 



THE BUILDERS OF THE EDDYSTONE 67 

Four years after Win Stanley was lost, a plain, 
sensible man, John Rudyerd, whose trade was 
to deal in silk goods, went to work and 
erected a wooden lighthouse, which was 
shaped like a pine cone, on the bleak and 
barren reef. But as the waters and winds 
had proved the destruction of Winstanley's 
tower, so fire afterward consumed that of 
Rudyerd. 

Rudyerd's tower stood the brunt of wave 
and storm for forty-six years. Then, early 
one cold December morning, some fishermen, 
who were getting ready their nets on the 
beach, saw clouds of smoke issuing from the 
lighthouse. Three men were known to be in 
the lighthouse ; one of them, the keeper, was 
ninety-four years old. As soon as these men 
discovered the fire, they began to work fran- 
tically with their buckets ; but their water 
was soon exhausted. They became wild with 
fright, and the terrible heat soon exhausted 
them. The melting lead, too, began to drop 



68 HEROES AND MARTYRS OF INVENTION 

on them from the roof^ and bm^ned them 
terribly. As the flames spread through the 
tower, and swept down with fierce rapidity 
from the top to the bottom, the terror- 
stricken men retreated before it nntil they 
sought refuge from the blazing beams and 
molten lead in a big crevice in the rock. 
There they huddled together, almost dead 
with terror and pain. 

Meanwhile the fishermen on shore had 
jumped into a boat, and had rowed with 
might and main to the crag. They arrived 
just in time to save the poor wretches from 
being burned. Their sufferings had been 
terrible. No sooner had the boat brought 
them safely to the shore than one of them, 
the moment he got out of the boat, was seized 
with an insane frenzy. He plunged into the 
forest and was never more seen. As for the 
poor old keeper, he was so entirely overcome 
by his fright and his maddening burns, that 
he died a few days after his rescue. 




The Edpystone Lighthouse. Page 6y. 



THE BUILDERS OF THE EDDYSTONE 69 

The third Eddystone Lighthouse^ which 
stood sturdily on the rock for more than a 
hundred years, was erected four years after 
Rudyerd's tower was burned. It was built 
by John Smeaton, one of the greatest invent- 
ors and engineers of the eighteenth century. 

It is said that, when a small boy, Smeaton 
liked to play with workmen's tools rather 
than with children's ordinary toys. At the 
early age of fourteen he built an engine 
for turning rose-work, and at twenty-five he 
invented an instrument for measuring a ship's 
way at sea. 

The lighthouse which Smeaton erected on 
the tempest-beaten crag of the Eddystone 
was a noble column of granite, which rose to 
a height of eighty-five feet. It resembled in 
shape the trunk of an oak-tree, and swept up 
in a gentle curve from its base. On the sum- 
mit was placed a large lantern, with a gallery 
around it. This famous lighthouse was taken 
down, stone by stone, in 1884, and re-erected 



70 HEROES AND MARTYRS OF INVENTION 

on a height on the mainland, near the old 
seafaring town of Plymouth — on the very 
spot, indeed, where Queen Elizabeth's brave 
old sea- warriors, Drake, Hawkins, and Fro- 
bisher, were playing their famous game of 
bowls, three hundred years ago, when the 
Spanish Armada hove in sight in the English 
Channel. A new and larger lighthouse was 
built on the Eddystone ; and this it is which 
to-day sheds its far-gleaming rays over the 
waters, and guides the sailors to their homes 
on the shore. 



THE INVENTORS OF COTTON-MACHINERY 71 



CHAPTER VII 

THE INVENTORS OF COTTON-MACHINERY : 
KAY; HARGREAVES; ARKWRIGHT 

The machinery for the spinning of cotton 
yarn, and for the weaving and printing of 
cotton cloths^ has, in every part of it, been 
invented and brought to its present excellence 
within the past one hundred and fifty years. 
As lately as in 1730^ no machine whatever 
existed even for the spinning of yarn. 

To six men of genius especially — five 
Englishmen and one American — is to be 
awarded the distinction of having established 
the cotton manufacture as one of the mightiest 
of the world's industries. For this industry 
has, in a century, created the English Man- 
chester out of a straggling rural hamlet, and 
Liverpool out of an obscure fishing village ; 



72 HEROES AND MARTYRS OF INVENTION 

has transformed the English county of Lan- 
caster from a dreary and barren waste into a 
noisy network of dense^ busy towns and 
crowded factories. 

These six men were John Kay, who in- 
vented the fly-shuttle ; James Hargreaves, 
who devised the spinning-jenny ; Richard 
Arkwrightj who made the water frame ; 
Samuel Crompton, who constructed the spin- 
ning-mule ; Edmund Cartwright, whose genius 
produced the power-loom ; and Eli Whitney, 
to whom we owe the great improvement of 
the cotton gin. 

Down to a period as recent as 1730, the 
spinning of cotton yarn was done by the 
finger and thumb, a thread at a time. 
The yarn was also woven by hand, the shuttle 
being thrown back by each hand alternately. 
It was in 1733 that John Kay revolutionized 
the art of weaving by introducing his fly- 
shuttle. 

This machine^ which seems simple even to 



THE IKVENTORS OF COTTOX-MACHINERY 73 

uncoutlmess to our eyes^ merely supplied a 
handle and spring, with which the shuttle 
could be worked with one hand. But so 
important was the change which the fly- 
shuttle effected, that Kay became at once 
the object of persecution by two opposite 
classes. 

The weavers, on one hand, were so incensed 
that they burst into his house, destroyed every 
one of his machines on which they could lay 
their hands, and threatened him with the 
same furious treatment. The capitalists, on 
the other hand, welcomed his invention. But 
they attempted to use it without right, and 
to deprive him of all the benefits of his 
device. Kay was forced to take refuge in 
Paris, where he soon after died in beggary 
and neglect. 

A fate scarcely less harsh overtook the 
next great improver of cotton machinery. 
James Hargreaves was a poor but ingenious 
weaver. A sore need was felt for some de- 



74 HEROES AND MARTYRS OF INVENTION" 

vice which would spin yarn more rapidly 
than had before been done. 

One day, an accident revealed to Hargreaves 
how this could be effected. As he sat brood- 
ing in his humble cottage, his wife's spinning- 
wheel happened to fall over upon the floor. 
Hargreaves perceived that the wheel still 
continued to revolve, the spindle being now 
in an upright, instead of a horizontal posi- 
tion. 

This gave him the hint which he needed. 
He went to work and made a spinning-frame, 
with eight spindles and a horizontal wheel. 
This machine he called after his wife (Jenny) 
the ^^spinning-jenny." But no sooner had 
his invention become known to the neighbor- 
ing spinners, than Hargreaves was assailed 
by a storm of savage anger and abuse. 

His cottage was attacked by a brutal mob. 
His precious spinning-jenny was broken to 
atoms ; and he himself barely escaped, with 
his wife, from the eager clutches of his enemies. 



THE INVENTORS OF COTTON-MACHINERY 75 

The rest of his life, like that of Kay before 
him, was a dreary yet patient struggle against 
starvation ; and he^, too, died unacknowledged, 
poor, an outcast, his invention having proved 
the greatest misfortune of his life. 

One of the most prosperous and busy towns 
in the great manufacturing region in northern 
England is Bolton. A hundred and thirty 
years ago it was a much smaller town than 
now, but it had then the reputation of being 
one of England's most thriving industrial 
centres. At that time Bolton was a queer 
straggling place, with many old grimy houses, 
and many narrow lanes and alleys branching 
off from the streets. One of these alleys con- 
ducted the wayfarer to an ancient, cosey inn, 
the Old Millstone. If you had been walking 
in this alley about the year 1750, you would 
have seen a rude sign hanging over a cellar 
on one side, bearing these words : " Come to 
the underground Barber ! He shaves for a 
penny!" 



76 HEROES AND MARTYRS OF INVENTION 

Descending into the cellar^ you would have 
found the barber to be a bright-eyed, active, 
keen-looking young man about twenty-one 
years of age, standing ready in his shirt- 
sleeves to shave the next customer. Nor 
w^ould he have to wait long, for the cheap 
rate at which he relieved people of their 
stubby beards brought an almost continual 
succession of artisans from the neighboring 
machine-shops to his dark little cellar. 

When he had shaved a customer, the latter 
would hasten to a lead cistern against the 
wall to wash his face ; for barbers in those 
days did not ^^fix up" their customers as 
comfortably after shaving as they do now. 

This lively barber, besides being very 
expert at his trade, was, like many another 
barber before him and since, a great talker. 
Everybody who came under the swift sweep 
of his razor had to pay his contribution of 
chatter. The barber asked his customers 
about their various trades, and he was always 



THE INTENTORS OF COTTON"-MACHINERY 77 

especially eager to learn what anybody would 
tell him about machinery. He loved to hear 
all about the new machines which were in- 
troduced from time to time into the shops and 
factories — how they were made^ how they 
worked, how much labor they saved, and 
what kind of goods they turned out. 

The name of our inquisitive and energetic 
barber was Richard Arkwright. Ilis child- 
hood and boyhood had not been very happy. 
His father was a very poor man, and had 
thirteen children. Of course, as there were 
then no free schools in England, he could not 
hope to give this large family a good educa- 
tion. The result was that Richard grew up 
without learning much of anything, and just 
as soon as he was strong enough to work he 
was set about it. Yet Richard was a youth 
of a very persevering, resolute spirit. He 
had a manly independence about him and a 
cheerful courage, which enabled him to bear 
bravely whatever hardships came upon him. 



78 HEROES AND MARTYRS OF INVENTION 

and to sturdily carry on his struggles with 
the world. 

While he was shaving for a penny, he was 
always dreaming of something better and 
more profitable. He knew that he had a 
good deal of mechanical ingenuky, and he 
resolved to put it to use as soon as he could. 
He spent the little leisure time he had in 
studying machinery, and in trying to invent 
something. By the time he was thirty, 
Richard made up his mind that he had had 
quite enough of the shaving business. He 
worked hard, yet he only made enough to 
keep body and soul together ; he was laying 
up nothing for the future. So, throwing 
aside the razor, he took up the trade of a 
dealer in hair. 

He wandered about the country, buying the 
ringlets of rustic young girls, making them up 
into wigs, and selling them to the old people. 
Meanwhile he invented a new way of dyeing 
hair, which brought him in quite a brisk 



THE INVENTORS OF COTTON-MACHINERY 79 

trade. He thrived so well in his new busi- 
ness that he laid up a considerable sum of 
money, and falling in love with a farmer's 
daughter, he married her. 

One day he was in a manufacturing town, 
where he heard some weavers talking about 
the threads used in the weaving of cloth. 
The cloth they made consisted of linen thread 
w^oven wdth cotton. But it was hard, they 
said, to get enough cotton thread to form 
what was called the " weft " of the cloth. A 
machine for spinning cotton thread had 
already been invented by the poor weaver, 
James Hargreaves, to whom his invention 
had been nothing but a misfortune^ since 
he had been persecuted and driven from 
place to place, because the spinners thought 
that his " spinning-jenny " would deprive them 
of work. But the spinning-jenny did not pro- 
duce enough thread for the demand, nor was 
its thread fine and close enough for the weft. 

Richard Arkwright listened intently to all 



80 HEROES AND MARTYRS OF INVENTION 

that the weavers were saying. He plied 
them with questions. He found one of Har- 
greaves's spinning-jennies^ and examined 
closely its every part. From that time he 
had but one idea — to invent a machine which 
would spin thread faster and finer than the 
spinning-jenny. And now^ like many invent- 
ors who absorb themselves in their one idea, 
Richard began to neglect his regular business. 
His young wife was angry to see him daily 
growing poorer and poorer ; for, instead of 
saving money, he did not now earn enough 
to give them the common comforts of life. 
Instead of going up and down the country 
for his stock of maidens' tresses, he stayed at 
home, making models of machines and brood- 
ing over them by the hour together. One 
day he would feel sure that the model he had 
just made would answer the purpose, and 
bring fame and fortune at last ; the next, he 
would discover some fatal defect, would throw 
the model aside, and begin on a new one. 



THE INYEI^TORS OF COTTOI^-MACHmERY 81 

They finally grew so poor that it was hard 
for them to procure enough to eat from 
day to day. Richard's wife^ who was a 
young woman of rather violent temper^ was 
always upbraiding him for what she thought 
his idleness, and crying out to him that his 
attempts to invent a spinning-machine were 
all nonsense. At last her patience gave way 
entirely, and one day she seized the last 
model, which he had carefully and laboriously 
made, and in a fit of rage threw it violently 
on the floor. 

Richard could not stand this. He was 
infuriated to see his pretty model lying on 
the floor in twenty pieces, and told his wife 
to leave him forever. She obeyed him, going 
away from their humble home, never to 
return. 

After several years of great poverty and 
suffering, during which he met and overcame 
many obstacles, Richard at last completed the 
machine which has made his name immortal 



82 HEROES Al^D MARTYRS OF INVENTION 

in the annals of invention. It was while he 
was struggling with his troubles that one day 
he arrived at Preston^ which he had made his 
home. An election for member of Parlia- 
ment was going on, and his vote was greatly 
needed. But he looked so shabby and ragged 
that the party managers were ashamed to 
lead him to the polls. So they took him to 
a tailor's, fitted him out with a new suit of 
clothes, and brought him up to the voting- 
place. 

But the old days of want vanished 
forever after Arkwright had at last intro- 
duced his spinning-frame. This machine 
produced a cotton thread fit not only for the 
" weft/' but also for the ^^warp " of the cloth, 
so that the cloth could now be woven wholly 
of cotton. 

In a few years the beautiful vale of the 
river Derwent, in the centre of England, 
revealed to the eye several large mills busily 
at work with Arkwright's machines, and not 



THE INVENTORS OF COTTON-MACHINERY 83 

far from them rose a stately country-house, 
with parks and lawns, known as Willersley 
Castle. Both the mills and the castle belonged 
to Richard Arkwright, who had become rich 
and prosperous, and was growing richer every 
day. 

He who had once been a humble barber in 
a dingy cellar, shaving workmen for a penny 
apiece, was now one of the chief men of his 
neighborhood, and one of the most famous in 
all England. He was made High Sheriff of 
his county, which in England is a high honor ; 
and once, when King George the Third paid 
a visit to the locality, Arkwright, as Sheriff, 
presented the monarch with an address of wel- 
come. For this slight deed, and not because 
he was the inventor of one of the most useful 
machines ever made, the king made Arkwright 
a knight, so that he rose from his knees with the 
title of Sir Richard Arkwright. Thus titled, 
rich, and renowned, the inventor lived to a 
good old age, happy in the respect of all men. 



84 HEROES AND MARTYRS OF INVENTION 



CHAPTER VIII 

THE INVENTORS OF COTTON-MACHINERY^ CON- 
TINUED : CROMPTON, CARTWRIGHT^ WHITNEY 

The next advance in cotton machinery 
was the spinning-mule, invented by the shy, 
simple, and confiding Samuel Crompton. 
Crompton's mule is confidently declared to be 
" the fulcrum of that mighty lever, the cotton 
trade of England." It almost displaced the 
spinning-jenny of Hargreaves, and its princi- 
ple has remained to this day, for the most 
part, unchanged. 

It may be fairly said that it was Samuel 
Crompton, chiefly, who created by his inven- 
tion that great network of English manu- 
facturing towns, of which the centre is 
Blackburn ; which includes Oldham, Preston, 
and Manchester; and to which appears to 



THE INYEN^TORS OF COTTON'-MACHINERY 85 

have been awarded the special task of cloth- 
ing mankind. 

Crompton revealed the signs of unusual 
talents at a very early age. He was fond of 
books. He had a rare taste for music. He 
constructed excellent fiddles when a mere 
boy. He early learned to weave, and before 
he had arrived at manhood had already begun 
to construct, in his own mind, the machine 
which was destined, not indeed to enrich him, 
but to add enormously to the wealth and 
prosperity of his native country. 

In the " Hall-in-the-Wood," an ancient, 
rambling mansion which stood amid fine old 
oaks on the banks of the river Eagley, near 
Bolton, Crompton worked diligently and in 
secret for five years. At the end of that 
time, the spinning-mule had grown into a 
practical machine. It united the leading 
features of the machines of Hargreaves and 
Arkwright, and turned out a yarn easily 
superior to anything previously produced. 



86 HEROES AOT) MARTYRS OF INYENTIOltT 

But now Crompton was called upon to 
undergo the same persecutions and bitter 
wrongs which had assailed the others. The 
same Blackburn weavers and spinners who 
had driven Hargreaves from his home now 
attacked Crompton^ and destroyed his ma- 
chines. He took one of his mules to piei^es^ 
and hid it in the roof of the ^^ Hall-in-the- 
Wood." When, after many weeks, the rage 
of his enemies subsided, he put the mule 
together again, and, hid in the garret, spun 
his yarn upon it day aiid night. 

Soon the yarn which he produced became 
famous for its firmness and fineness through 
all the country round. Curious folk flocked 
from every direction to see his machine. 
When Crompton refused them admission, 
they brought ladders, and climbed up to the 
windows to catch a glimpse of it. " One 
pertinacious fellow," so goes the story, " hid 
himself for several days in the cock-loft, from 
which he watched Crompton at work in the 



THE INVENTORS OF COTTON-MACHINERY 87 

garret below^ through a gimlet hole which he 
had bored in the ceiling." 

Crompton's struggles against poverty^ mob- 
violence^ and many attempted thefts of his 
invention^ were long and desperate ; but he 
bore them all with a sweet and patient tem- 
per, which showed him to be a hero among 
men. 

After many years of suspense^ however^ he 
seemed at last to be on the very verge of re- 
ceiving the reward of his splendid service to 
the great industry of cotton-spinning. The 
prime minister of England, Spencer Perceval, 
expressed his intention of conferring on the 
veteran inventor a liberal pension. 

One day, Crompton was awaiting the prime 
minister in the lobby of the House of Com- 
mons. Presently Perceval came up and told 
Crompton that he should receive twenty thou- 
sand pounds, as a gift from the nation. Per- 
ceval then turned away to enter the House. 
At that instant the sharp ring of a pistol 



88 HEROES AND MARTYRS OF INYENTION" 

eclioed through the hall. There was a loud 
cry of alarm and dismay. Perceval fell to the 
floor, shot through the heart by the crazy 
assassin Bellingham. Crompton's last hope 
was gone, and he turned sadly away. The 
man who had created a machine which even 
then spun daily a thousand pounds of yarn, 
was put off with a pittance of five thousand 
pounds, which was at once swallowed up by 
his debts ; and Crompton, like Kay and Har- 
greaves before him, spent the days of his old 
age in privation, neglect, and almost in 
beggary. 

The four men who have already been 
described as the pioneers in the invention of 
cotton machinery were all of humble origin. 
They were what we are wont to call self- 
made men. Kay was an artisan loom-maker, 
Arkwright was a barber and then a dealer in 
hair, Hargreaves and Crompton were obscure 
weavers. Each, by the sheer force of un- 
tutored genius, rose from the lower regions of 



THE INVENTORS OF COTTON-MACHINERY 89 

hand-labor, into the higher sphere of success- 
ful inventors. 

The next in the line of cotton-machine 
inventors, however, was a man of far dif- 
ferent pursuits. Edmund Cartwright came of 
an excellent family. He was a graduate of 
the University of Oxford. He was a quiet 
country clergyman of the Church of England. 
He was a man of tranquil literary tastes, a 
student, a bookworm, and a tolerable poet. 
Nothing, it would seem, could be more remote 
from the bent of his mind than mechanics. 
His habits were all those of the study, and of 
the even tenor of pious duty. 

In this quiet and useful life, Cartwright 
lived on to middle age. It was not until his 
fortieth year that, strangely and suddenly, 
the genius of mechanical invention awoke 
within him. A chance conversation at the 
dinner table led to the great invention by 
Edmund Cartwright of the power-loom. 

It appeared that Arkwright's machines 



90 HEROES AND MARTYRS OF INVENTION 

were spinning more yarn than the weavers 
could turn into cloth. It struck the grave 
country parson, Cartwright, that machinery 
might be devised which would weave the 
yarn as fast as it could be spun. His com- 
panions at table ridiculed the idea as absurd ; 
but Cartwright retorted that he had just seen, 
in London, a curious automaton figure which 
moved chessmen to their pro3)er places on the 
chessboard, for all the world as if it were 
alive. 

" Before many years," declared the learned 
churchman, " we shall have weaving Johnnies, 
as well as spinning Jennies." 

He himself fulfilled his daring prophecy. 
He had never seen a loom in his life ; but 
from this time forth he brooded perpetually 
upon the idea which floated, at first vaguely 
and then more and more definitely, in his 
mind. It is to be feared that the church 
fairs, the parish children, and the pastoral 
visits were somewhat neglected ; that the 



THE INVENTORS OF COTTON-MACHINERY 91 

doctor's favorite poets and essayists took on 
layers of dust, and that tlie doctor's ser- 
mons were somewhat less edifying than of 
old. 

" He was often observed by his family/' 
says his biographer, " striding up and down 
the room in a fit of abstraction, and throwing 
his arms violently from side to side, like a 
weaver jerking the shuttles." 

After months of thought and repeated ex- 
periment, the power-loom was completed as a 
practical machine, and it soon brought about 
a complete revolution in the weaving of cot- 
ton cloths. 

But neither Cartwright's age, nor sacred 
calling, nor immense service to the industries 
of England, saved him from persecution, or 
sheltered him from the biting cares of poverty. 
Masters and men were up in arms against 
him as soon as his design was known. His 
goods were maliciously damaged ; his work- 
men were spirited away from him ; his patent 



92 HEROES AND MARTYRS OF INVENTION 

right was repeatedly infringed. Calumny and 
hatred dogged his steps. 

After a succession of disasters his prospects 
assumed a brighter hue. A large Manchester 
firm contracted for the use of four hundred 
looms- But a few days after they were at 
work, the mill which had been built to receive 
them stood a heap of blackened ruins. 

When Cartwright had turned from his 
quiet pastoral pursuits to the labors of inven- 
tion, he had been the possessor of a large for- 
tune. He was now so reduced in means, that, 
in his old age, he was forced to attempt to 
gain a bare living by his pen. But soon the 
fascination of inventing drew him again irre- 
sistibly into the troublous field from which he 
had been driven by poverty. He had not 
entered it at first for the sake of riches. 

Cartwright was a man of a singularly 
noble, benevolent, unselfish character. His 
high purpose was to benefit mankind ; and to 
that purpose he clung with heroic fidelity. 



THE mVENTOBS OF COTTON-MACHINEEY 93 

Neither discouragement nor ruin could cow 
him, or drive him from it. So it was that 
the years of his old age, spent though they 
mostly were in privation, were filled with 
varied and useful labors. The resources of 
his inventive genius seemed imlimited. He 
devised wool-combing machines, and baking 
machines ; rope-making machines and fire 
preventives ; ploughs and wheel-carriages. 
He had, too, that wonderful foresight which 
has so often been a gift of men of inventive 
genius ; for, twenty years before Fulton 
piloted the " Clermont " up the Hudson, Cart- 
wright predicted to his son that, if he lived to 
be a man, he would see both ships and land- 
carriages impelled by steam. 

Eli Whitney was one of those bright, pre- 
cocious Yankee boys who in early years 
reveal a great fondness for making things, 
and who show ingenuity in doing whatever 
they turn their hands to. His father was a 
plain Massachusetts farmer, who tilled his 



94 HEROES AND MARTYRS OF INVENTION 

acres near Westborough in that State. Eli, 
from the first, disliked farming. He avoided 
farm work whenever he could, and instead 
spent much of his time in his father's work- 
shop. The good farmer was in the habit of 
repairing his own wheels and chairs and 
mending his fences, so that he had a small 
collection of tools. These tools were Eli's 
delight. Whenever he had the chance he 
would slip away into the workshop and try- 
to fashion some article which his already in- 
genious mind had designed. 

On one occasion, when Eli was twelve 
years old, his father, on his return from a 
journey, asked what his boys had been doing 
during his absence. The reply was that the 
other boys had been steadily at work in the 
fields, but that Eli had spent his time in 
the workshop. 

" And what has he been doing there ? " 

^^He has been making a fiddle." 

" Ah," sighed the worthy farmer, " I 



THE INVENTORS OF COTTON-MACHINERY 95 

fear Eli will have to take his portion in 
fiddles!" 

Nevertheless^ the fiddle proved to be a very 
good one, and served its purpose quite well at 
the country dances in the neighborhood. 

Another time the farmer, on going to 
church one Sunday morning, chanced to 
leave his watch — - a big, old-fashioned silver 
^Hurnip" — at home. As soon as his father 
was out of the house, Eli seized the watch, 
and eagerly took it to pieces, bit by bit. 
When he saw what he had done he was horri- 
fied, for his father was a very strict man, and 
would be sure to punish him severely for 
spoiling his watch. So Eli set to work, and 
by dint of his skill succeeded in putting the 
watch together again just as the farmer got 
back from church. So neatly did he do this 
that his father never discovered how his 
watch had been treated, until, years after, Eli 
told him what he had done. 

There are many other stories of Eli's 



96 HEROES AND MARTYRS OF INVENTION 

youthful ingenuity, which there is not space 
to repeat here. He was always trying his 
hand at something, and he usually succeeded 
in whatever he attempted. His stepmother 
found him useful in a hundred ways in the 
household, repairing old utensils and making 
new ones. When the Revolutionary War 
broke out, Eli began to make nails, which 
were greatly needed by the patriots. Then 
he turned his hand to making the long pins 
which the women of that day used for fas- 
tening their bonnets ; and he also for a w^hile 
drove a thriving trade in walking-sticks, in 
which he invented many striking and grace- 
ful devices. 

As Eli approached manhood he began to 
feel sorely the need of a better education 
than the country schools afforded. He had 
studied much by himself in the intervals 
between work, and knew more about mathe- 
matics and mechanics than most lads of his 
age. But he was not satisfied with this. He 



THE INVENTORS OF COTTON-MACHINERY 97 

wanted to go to college. His father was 
resolutely opposed to this, and refused to 
give him the means. So Eli set hard to 
work, and managed, by making various arti- 
cles and teaching school, to save enough 
money to enter college. He went to Yale 
when he was twenty-three years old, and 
graduated four years later. While in college 
young Whitney gave many proofs of his 
mechanical ingenuity. On one occasion he 
repaired the apparatus of one of the profess- 
ors, who was about to send it to Europe for 
the purpose, as he supposed that no one in 
this country had the skill to do it. 

Eli Whitney at first intended to adopt 
teaching as his profession. His heart was 
wrapped up in mechanics, but he was poor, 
and could see no way in which he could fol- 
low his natural bent. Not long after gradu- 
ating, therefore, he accepted an engagement 
as a tutor in the family of a gentleman who 
lived in Georgia. It was a fortunate accident 



98 HEROES AND MARTYRS OF INVENTION 

that^ while on his way to the South^ young 
Whitney made the acquaintance of the widow 
of the famous Revolutionary hero^ General 
Nathaniel Greene. This lady, who lived 
near Savannah, at once took a liking to him, 
and on their arrival in Georgia invited him 
to stay for a while at her home. This was 
all the more agreeable, as Whitney found, to 
his disappointment, that the gentleman who 
had engaged him had selected another tutor. 
Mrs. Greene kindly cheered him, and told him 
to make her house his home. 

Thus left without the employment which 
had been promised him, Whitney again 
turned his attention to his first love, 
mechanics. It happened that an occasion 
soon arose when he was able to show his 
generous hostess and friend how skilful he 
was in mechanical devices. The good lady 
was fond of embroidery, but found that the 
tambour or frame upon which she did her 
delicate work was not well fitted for that 



THE INVENTORS OF COTTON-MACHINERY 99 

purpose. Whitney eagerly assured her that 
he could make a frame which would serve 
her much better. He set cheerfully to work, 
and had soon completed a frame far superior 
to the old one. 

This proof of his inventive talent greatly 
impressed Mrs. Greene, and soon opened to 
the young man the grand opportunity of 
his life. Not long after, Mrs. Greene was 
entertaining a number of her husband's old 
army friends at Mulberry Grove, her home. 
One day the conversation happened to turn 
upon the cotton production of the Southern 
States. One of the officers remarked that 
cotton could be easily raised all through the 
South, but that so long as it required so 
much labor to separate the cotton from its 
seed, the cotton crop could not be made a 
profitable one. If any device could be found, 
he added, by which the cotton could be easily 
cleaned, the production of cotton would 
become an enormously paying industry. 



100 HEROES AND MARTYRS OF INVENTION 

^^ Gentlemen/' said Mrs. Greene^ who was 
intently listening to the talk^, "'Hell this to 
my young friend^ Mr. Whitney. I verily 
believe he can make anything." 

Now AYliitney had never seen a piece of 
cotton in his life ; none the less^ he promptly 
made np his mind that he would devote his 
every energy to solving the problem thus put 
to him. He first examined some cotton, and 
saw at once what the task was which he had 
to perform. He had no tools with which to 
begin his work, but he sturdily set about 
making some. 

In less than ten days he had completed his 
first model of a cotton-cleaning machine. 
He was delighted with its success, and went 
on improving it by every device he could 
think of. In two or three months he had 
perfected a perfectly practicable working 
cotton-gin. It was speedily proved that this 
machine, which could be worked by a single 
man or woman, could clean more cotton in a 



THE INYENTOES OF COTTON-MACHINERY 101 

single day than could be done by a man or 
woman;, by the old hand method^ in several 
months. The immense utility of the cotton- 
gin was at once recognized throughout the 
South; and now Whitney suffered, as so 
many inventors had suffered before him, from 
the dishonesty of greedy money-makers. The 
building in which his cotton-gin was kept 
was broken into, and the cotton-gin taken 
away. It was at once copied, and put into 
use in various places before he could get his 
patent. 

The fruits of his great invention were 
thus stolen from him. Although he got sev- 
eral patents, he never grew rich, as so many 
Southern planters did by the use of his 
machine. In vain he petitioned Congress 
for redress and compensation. The inventor 
of the cotton-gin, by which he undoubtedly 
created the wealth and power of nearly every 
Southern State, lived and died almost in a 
state of poverty. But his was a patient and 



102 HEROES AKD MARTYRS OF INVENTION 

heroic spirit. He bore the injustice of men 
and the ingratitude of his country with 
cheerful serenity^ and died assured at least of 
a deathless fame^ with his name enrolled high 
up on the list of the world's greatest inventors. 



JAMES WATT -STEAM-ENGINE 103 



CHAPTER IX 

JAMES WATT, THE INVENTOR OF THE STEAM- 
ENGINE 

In a small cottage at Greenock, near Glas- 
gow, in Scotland, there was living, about a 
century and a half ago, a very bright but 
delicate boy. In many ways he was quite 
unlike other boys of his age. He was very 
fond of books, yet he disliked going to school 
so much that, being feeble in health, his 
parents kept him at home. He was a very 
truthful boy. When any dispute took place 
between him and his playmates, his father 
would always say, " Let us hear what James 
says about it. From him I always get the 
truth." 

When this boy was seven or eight years old 
a neighbor said to his father, " Why don't 



104 HEROES AND MARTYES OF INVENTION 

you send tins lad to school ? He is wasting 
his time doing nothing here at home." 

'^ See what he is doing/' was the father's 
reply, "before you say he is wasting his 
time." 

The neighbor looked down at James, who 
was seated on the hearth. He was not amus- 
ing himself with playthings, but was very 
busy drawing triangles and curves and other 
mathematical lines. " You must pardon my 
hasty words," said the neighbor ; " his educa- 
tion has not been neglected ; he is, indeed, no 
common child." 

Not far away from his own home lived an 
aunt of James, with whom he often stayed. 
One day, the aunt found him in the kitchen, 
studying her tea-kettle. He was bent over 
it, and was closely watching the steam which 
puffed from its spout. Then he would take 
off the lid, hold a cup over the steam, and 
carefully count the drops of water into which 
it was condensed. The aunt roundly scolded 



JAMES WATT — STEAM-ENGINE 105 

him for what she ttiought his trifling. She 
little dreamed that the boy was taking his 
first lesson in a science, by the pursuit of 
which he was destined to change the whole 
character of the industries of the world, and 
win for himself an immortal fame. 

James Watt's pastimes and tastes, indeed, 
from earliest boyhood were very different from 
those of other lads. His father kept a store 
for the sale of articles used by ships, and it 
was a favorite recreation of James to spend 
his time there among the ropes, sails, and 
tackle, finding out how they were made, and 
to what uses they were devoted. He was 
often found in the evening, too, sprawled at 
full length on the sward of the hill near 
Greenock, gazing for hours together at the 
stars. Already an ambition to learn the 
great secrets of astronomy had arisen in his 
mind. 

When he was fifteen years old, young Watt 
was known in his neighborhood as a prodigy 



106 HEROES AND MARTYKS OF INVENTION 

of learning for his age. He had now been to 
school for a year or two^ and had ardently 
studied mathematics and natural philosophy. 
At the same time he had learned a great deal 
about mineralogy^ chemistry, botany, and 
physiology. Not only had he derived much 
knowledge from books, but he understood 
how to apply this knowledge in many ways. 
He had become a good carpenter ; he knew 
how to work in metals ; and he took great 
delight in making chemical experiments in a 
little laboratory which he had fitted up at 
home. But perhaps the most wonderful thing 
that he did was to construct a small electri- 
cal machine, which astonished every one who 
saw it. 

There was a queer old man in Glasgow, 
which was not very far from Greenock, who 
kept a small dingy shop, where he mended 
spectacles, fishing-tackle, and fiddles. In this 
shop young Watt worked for a while as an 
apprentice. But he was now eighteen years 



JAMES WATT — STEAM-ENGINE 107 

old^ and quite a man in his thoughts and aims. 
He longed to make his way in the great 
world ; above all^ he desired to see London, 
and learn what could only be acquired in that 
great city. So one day, supplied with a 
small bundle of clothes, and accompanied by 
his friend, John Marr, he set out for London 
on horseback. It took the travellers ten days 
to make their journey, and as Watt had 
never before been far away from his native 
place he saw many sights on the way which 
interested and delighted him. 

His father was poor, and Watt carried but 
a small sum of money with him. So when 
he at last reached London he looked up some 
very humble lodgings in an obscure part of 
the city. He ate only enough to keep body 
and soul together, and after spending a few 
days in viewing the wonders of the vast, 
crowded capital, he set to work on his studies 
with all his might. He took service with an 
instrument-maker, and soon became very 



108 HEROES AND MARTYRS OF INVENTION 

skilful in making quadrants^ compasses, and 
other instruments. 

But so delicate in health was he that he 
soon broke down with hard work and meagre 
fare, and was obliged to go back home again. 
His native air restored his strength, and he 
resumed work with redoubled zeal. At the 
age of twenty-one Watt opened a shop of his 
own in Glasgow, and put out his sign as a 
mathematical-instrument maker. But he did 
many other things besides making instru- 
ments. He constructed organs, fiddles, gui- 
tars, and flutes. At the same time he pursued 
other studies with the greatest ardor, and 
soon knew a great deal about engineering, 
natural history, languages, and literature. He 
became well known to the professors and stu- 
dents of Glasgow University, in the shade of 
which his little shop stood, and his amiable 
disposition and ripe knowledge made him a 
great favorite with them, and secured him 
many warm and valuable friends. 



JAMES WATT — STEAM-ENGINE 109 

It was while Watt was engaged in these 
many busy and useful occupations that an 
incident occurred which changed the whole 
course of his life, and which in time led to 
fame and fortune. One day an old steam- 
engine, made by a man named Newcomen, 
was brought to him to repair. This engine 
was the best that had ever been invented ; but 
it was a clumsy affair at best, and could not 
do better or quicker work than horses. As 
soon as Watt's keen eve examined it, he saw 
that the Newcomen engine was not good for 
much. Yet it showed him that an engine 
might be made which, with the use of steam, 
would perform wonders. 

From that time he gave himself up to an 
absorbing study as to how to make a really 
useful and powerful steam-engine. There 
was something wanting — what was it ? This 
was the question which perplexed him for 
days and weeks, and even years : how to keep 
the cylinder of the engine always as hot as 



110 HEROES AND MARTYRS OF INVENTION 

the steam which entered it, and yet to have 
the cylinder get cold enough to condense the 
steam when the piston descended. Many a 
time Watt was on the point of giving up the 
problem in despair ; but his resolute will kept 
him at work, and impelled him to persevere 
bravely. 

One day, as with knitted brow he was 
sauntering across the Glasgow common, all 
of a sudden an idea struck him which solved 
the difficulty which had so long worried him. 
It occurred to him that, since steam was elas- 
tic, it would rush into any space or vessel the 
air in which had been exhausted. He hurried 
home in a fever of impatience. He con- 
structed a vessel separate from the cylinder, 
and made a connection between them, and 
the vessel being exhausted of air, he found 
that the steam rushed into it. 

This was the most important of all Watt's 
discoveries. He worked away on his engine 
now with redoubled zeal ; but years were to 



JAMES WATT — STEAM-ENGINE 111 

pass before his great object was fully achieved. 
It was ten years after his walk on Glasgow 
common before his idea had taken shape in 
an actual working steam-engine. His health 
more than once failed him^ and on one occa- 
sion, so discouraged had he become^ he bitterly 
exclaimed^ " Of all things in the world, there 
is nothing so foolish as inventing ! " 

But the triumph of his life, bringing with 
it world-wide renown and ample wealth, came 
at last. About a hundred years ago Watt set 
up his first complete steam-engine in London. 
It saved labor, and in many industries at once 
took the place of man and horse power. All 
the world saw after a while what a wonderful 
machine it was ; but no one then could have 
foretold to what vast uses the idea of Watt's 
engine was to be put. We, who live in the 
days of steamships, railways, great mills, 
elevators, and a thousand other results of 
Watt's invention, can more clearly see of what 
enormous benefit it has been to mankind. 



112 HEEOES AND MARTYRS OF INVENTION 

James Watt lived to a happy and prosper- 
ous old age, crowned with honors and revered 
by all his countrymen. He pursued his 
labors and researches to the end, and many 
were the ingenious devices which he invented. 
A fine statue of him stands in the Museum at 
Glasgow, near which the little model of his 
steam-engine, made by himself, was long kept 
for every one to see. The visitor to West- 
minster Abbey may observe among the m^ 
morials of poets, statesmen, and the most 
famous of Britain's sons, a statue of Watt, in 
a sitting posture, with an eloquent inscrip- 
tion by Lord Brougham. > 



THE MONTGOLFIERS AND THE BALLOON 113 



CHAPTER X 

THE MONTGOLFIERS AND THE BALLOON 

On a blustering winter's night in the 
latter part of the last century (1782), two 
brothers were seated before a blazing log fire 
near Lyons in France. The room in which 
they sat was situated in their paper manufac- 
tory ;, for their trade was the making of paper. 
Between the brothers^ as they were comforta- 
bly toasting their knees at the fire, was a 
square table^ and on the table a map was 
spread out. The two young men soon 
became absorbed in an earnest conversation. 
News had arrived that the giant fortress of 
Gibraltar, which had lono^ been held bv the 
English, was being vigorously besieged by 
the French fleet ; and all Frenchmen were 
eagerly hoping for a victory by their coun- 



114 HEROES AND MARTYRS OF INYENTIOIS' 

trymen. The Montgolfiers — this was the 
name of the brothers — were eagerly discuss- 
ing the prospects of French success. Every 
now and then they would get up and bend 
over the map^ and try to trace out the posi- 
tions of the hostile forces at Gibraltar. At 
last^ Stephen^ the elder^ pointing to a certain 
fortification on the map;, exclaimed^ ^^ Ah^ if 
our good fellows could only in some way get 
over tliat^ victory would surely be theirs ! '' 

It happened that just then his wife came 
into the room with some clothes she had been 
washing. Spreading a line in front of the 
fire before which the brothers were sitting, 
she proceeded to hang up the clothes in order 
to dry them. Presently a petticoat fell off 
the line and floated over the blazing logs. 
Instead of falling into the fire, however, it 
became suddenly inflated, and, swelling out, it 
slowly floated up the chimney, out of sight. 

The two brothers stared at the disappear- 
ing petticoat with wonder and amazement. 



THE MONTGOLFIERS AND THE BALLOON 115 

In a moment a startling idea flashed through 
Stephen's brain. What if a machine could be 
devised which would carry people through 
the air^ by means of an inflated bag^ just as 
this inflated petticoat had soared aloft ? If 
such a device could be made^ then the French 
soldiers might be carried safely over the 
obstructing rampart at Gibraltar;^ and the 
triumph would be won ! 

This is one version of the story of bow 
the idea of the balloon first entered Stephen 
Montgolfier's head. Another version is that 
it was not the good dame's petticoat^ but the 
paper cover of a conical sugar-loaf^ which, 
being thrown upon the fire, became inflated 
and soared up the chimney. 

Whichever story is the true one, it is cer- 
tain that it was an accident which turned the 
thoughts of the Montgolfier brothers in the 
direction of making an air-machine which 
would enable people to travel in the air as 
well as on land and sea. But no accident 



116 HEROES AND MAllTYKS OF INVENTION 

could have given such ca hint to men of com- 
mon intellect. The Montgolfier brothers were 
far above the ordinary French manufacturer 
of their time in education and intelligence. 
They were ardently fond of study, and while 
they did not neglect their calling of paper- 
making, they devoted their spare hours to 
the reading of books, and to talking with 
each other about what they had read. Hap- 
pily the two brothers had congenial tastes, 
and were devotedly attached to each other. 
'Vy^hen young they had not wasted their time 
in pleasure-seeking, and from their entrance 
upon active life their aims were high and 
serious. 

No sooner had the idea of air-machines 
taken possession of their minds than they 
became deeply absorbed in it. Stephen, the 
elder and more able of the two, devoted days 
and nights to the construction of such a 
machine. At first he inflated a paper bag 
with hydrogen, since hydrogen, being lighter 



THE MONTGOLFIERS xVND THE BALLOOIN^ 117 

than air, would rise above it. But the gas 
escaped from the paper bag, and it thus 
became evident that paper was too light and 
frail a material for the purpose intended. 
The brothers next made a series of experi- 
ments with electricity, in the course of which 
they discovered that electricity lessened the 
weight of bodies. They made a rude balloon, 
and lit a fire under it, not only to rarefy the 
air, but also to supply a layer of electric fluid. 
This balloon was a large bag of silk, with a 
capacit}^ of about forty cubic feet. As soon 
as it had been inflated by the fire applied be- 
neath it, it rose rapidly until it bumped 
against the ceiling. 

Stephen Montgolfier was now convinced 
that he had found a way to make a balloon, 
and he resolved to prove it publicly to the 
world. He accordingly announced that on a 
certain June day in 1783, a balloon would be 
inflated and sent aloft in the public square of 
Annonay, the town where he lived. When 



THE MONTGOLFIERS AND THE BALLOON 119 

Paris^ and were speedily at work on another 
balloon. This time they resolved to use hydro- 
gen instead of heated air for inflating their 
machine. The balloon was soon ready, and 
on a midsummer's day a tremendous crowd 
gathered on the Champ de Mars, in Paris, to 
see it ascend. Up it went when loosened 
from its mooring-s, floatino; hio:h above the 
big city, and sweeping eastward, until it fell 
to the earth fifteen miles away. 

Thus far, however, though the Montgolfiers 
had proved that a machine could be made 
which would travel in the air, no experiment 
had been made of carrying up human beings 
in it. At first the Montgolfiers thought they 
would try the effect of an aerial voyage on 
some of the lower animals. Accordingly, 
they attached a small car or basket to one of 
their balloons, and placed in it a duck, a sheep, 
and a cock. These first travellers of the air 
went aloft, and after remaining several thou- 
sand feet above the earth, came down all safe 



120 HEROES AND MARTYRS OF INVENTION 

and sound. Then people began to think that 
in like manner men might trust themselves 
to the upper element. But at first it was 
thought safest to try a balloon which w^as 
fastened to the earth by ropes. In this way 
several men went up a hundred feet in 
a Montgolfier balloon. Then two men — the 
Marquis d'Arlandes and M. de Rozier — re- 
solved that they would cut altogether loose 
from the eartli; and risk the perils of a voyage 
in the upper air. Stephen Montgolfier set to 
work upon a balloon for this purpose. When 
it was finished he decorated it with ribbons 
and colors, and attached to its lower end a 
circular box or car for its human occu- 
pants. 

Finally all was ready. The balloon was 
inflated at Passy, a suburb of Paris. A great 
multitude gathered to see the ascent of the • 
first human beings who had ever mounted 
in the air far above the earth, while in 
Paris crowds occupied the towers of the 



THE MOXTGGLFIERS AND THE BALLOON 121 

cathedral of Notre Dame and other elevated 
points. 

D'Arlandes and De Rozier took tlieir places 
in the car^ the word to cut loose was given, 
and np shot the balloon into the clouds which 
hung in the air. It ascended slowly and 
steadily to a height of three thousand feet, 
and then passed at an easy pace over the 
streets and houses of Paris. It completely 
crossed the city, and soon ascended to such a 
height that the occupants of the car could not 
see any of the objects on the earth below 
them. Then D' Arlandes became alarmed, and 
insisted on descending. As soon, therefore, as 
they had got clear of the city, so that they 
would not fall on the buildings, the air was 
suffered to gradually escape, and the balloon 
fell just outside Paris. More than a hundred 
years have passed since the memorable voyage 
of D' Arlandes and De Rozier in their Mont- 
golfier balloon ; but, although it is very com- 
mon for men to make balloon voyages, no way 



122 HEROES a:n'd martyrs of invention 

has as yet been discovered for guiding bal- 
loons, and propelling them against the air- 
currents, and so making them practically use- 
ful for the purposes of travel. 



HUMPHRY D A Y Y — SAFETY-LAMP 1 23 



CHAPTER XI 

HUMPHRY DAVY AND THE SAFETY-LAMP 

Few boys have ever led a happier, busier, 
or more varied existence than did Humphry 
Davy. He was the son of a poor wood- 
carver, who lived in the pretty seaside town 
of Penzance, in England, where Humphry was 
born in 1778. Lowly, however, as was his 
birth, in his earliest years Humphry gave 
many proofs that nature had endowed him 
with rare talents. 

Some of the stories told of his childish 
brightness are hard to believe. They relate, 
for instance, that before he was two years 
old he could talk almost as plainly and 
clearly as a grown person ; that he could re- 
peat many passages of " Pilgrim's Progress," 
from having heard them^ before he could 



124 HEROES AND MART YES OF INVENTION 

read ; and that at five years old he could 
read very rapidly^ and remembered almost 
everything he read. 

His father, the wood-carver, had died while 
Humphry was still very young, and had left 
his family poor. But by good-fortune a kind 
neighbor and friend, a Mr. Tonkine, took care 
of the widow and her children, and obtained 
a place for Humphry as an apprentice with 
an apothecary of the town. Humphry proved, 
indeed, a rather troublesome inmate of the 
apothecary's house. He set up a chemical 
laboratory in his little room upstairs, and 
there devoted himself to all sorts of experi- 
ments. Every now and then an explosion 
would be heard, which made the members 
of the apothecary's household quake with 
terror. 

Humphry began to dream ambitious dreams. 
Not for him, he thought, was the drudgery of 
an apothecary store. He felt that he had in 
himself the making of a famous man, and he 



HUMPHRY DAVY — SAFETY-LAMP 125 

resolved that he would leave no science un- 
explored. He set to work with a will. His 
quick mind soon grasped the sciences not only 
of mathematics and chemistry^ but of botany, 
anatomy, geology, and metaphysics. His 
means for the experiments he desired to make 
were very limited, but he did - not allow any 
obstacle to prevent him from pursuing them. 

He was especially fond of wandering along 
the seashore, and observing and examining 
the many curious and mysterious objects 
which he found on the crags and in the sand. 
One day his eye was struck with the bladders 
of seaweed, which he found full of air. The 
question was, how did the air get into them? 
This puzzled him, and he could find no 
answer to it, because he had no instruments 
to experiment with. 

But on another day, soon after, as he 
strolled on the beach, what was his surprise 
and delight to find a case of surgical instru- 
ments^ which had been flung up from some 



126 HEROES AND MART YES OF INVENTION" 

wreck on the coast ! Armed with this, he 
hastened home, and managed to turn each one 
of the instruments to some useful account. 
He constructed an air-pump out of a surgeon's 
syringe, and made a great many experiments 
with it. 

Fortunately for Humphry, he formed a 
friendship with a youth who could not only 
sympathize with him, but was of a great deal 
of use to him. This was Gregory Watt, a 
son of the great James Watt, the inventor of 
the steam-engine. Gregory Watt had gone 
to Penzance for his health, and had there 
fallen in with the ambitious son of the wood- 
carver. This new friend was able to give 
Humphry many new and valuable hints, and 
encouraged him with hopeful words to go on 
with his studies and experiments. 

Already Humphry was getting to be known 
as a scientific genius beyond the quiet neigh- 
borhood of Penzance. He had proposed a 
theory on heat and light which had attracted 



HUMPHRY DAVY — SAFETY-LAMP 127 

the attention of learned men ; and at twenty- 
one he had discovered the peculiar properties 
of nitrous oxide — what we now call ^^ laugh- 
ing-gas" — though he nearly killed himself 
by inhaling too much of it. He had also 
made many experiments in galvanism^, and 
had found silicious earth in the skin of reeds 
and grass. 

So famous indeed had he already become^ 
that at the age of twenty-two — when most 
young men are only just leaving college — he 
was chosen lecturer on science at the great 
Eoyal Institution in London. There he 
amazed men by the eloquence and clearness 
with which he revealed the mysteries of 
science. He was so bright and attractive a 
young man, moreover, that the best London 
society gladly welcomed him to its drawing- 
rooms, and praises of him were in every 
mouth. His lecture-room was crowded when- 
ever he spoke. 

But he was not a bit spoiled by all this 



128 HEROES AND MARTYRS OF INVENTION 

flattery and homage. He worked all the 
harder ; resolved to achieve yet greater tri- 
umphs in science than he had yet done. An 
opportunity soon arose to turn his knowl- 
edge and inventive powers to account in a 
very important way. For a long time the 
English public had every now and then been 
horrified by the terrible explosions which took 
place in the coal mines. These explosions 
resulted often in an appalling loss of human 
life. Their cause was the filling of the mine 
by a deadly gas, called ^^ fire-damp/' which, 
when ignited by a lighted candle or lamp, ex- 
ploded with fearful violence. One day an 
explosion of fire-damp occurred which killed 
over one hundred miners on the spot. 

This event called universal attention to the 
subject, and Humphry Davy was besought to 
try and find some means of preventing, or 
at least lessening, similar calamities. He 
promptly undertook the task, and set about 
it with all his wonted energy. The problem 



HUMPHRY DAVY — SAFETY-LAMP 129 

before him was how to provide light in the 
mines in such a way that the miners might 
see to work by it^ and at the same time be 
safe from the danger of fire-damp explosion. 
Many attempts had been made to achieve this^ 
but they had all failed. 

Davy began his experiments. He soon 
made several valuable discoveries. One was 
that explosions of inflammable gases could 
not pass through long narrow metallic tubes. 
Another was that when he held a piece of 
wire gauze over a lighted candle^ the flame 
would not pass through it. As a result of his 
long and patient toil Davy was able at last to 
construct his now famous Safety-Lamp^ which 
has undoubtedly saved the lives of thousands 
during the period which has elapsed since it 
was invented. He presented a model of his 
new lamp to the Royal Society^ in whose 
rooms in London it is to be seen to this day. 

It is a simple affair^ being merely a lamp 
screwed on to a wire gauze cylinder, and 



130 HEKOES AND MARTYRS OF INVENTION 

fitted to it by a tight ring. His idea was to 
admit the fire-damp into the lamp gradually 
by narrow tnbes^ so that it would be con- 
sumed by combustion. The Safety-Lamp was 
in truth the greatest triumph of Humphry 
Davy's useful life. 

" I value it/' he said^ " more than anything 
I ever did." 

Honors of all kinds were showered upon 
him. Many medals were awarded to him^ 
and the grateful miners subscribed from their 
scant wages enough to present him" with a 
magnificent service of silver worth 1 12^000. 
His discovery was hailed from every part of 
Europe. The Czar Alexander of Russia sent 
him a beautiful vase^, and he was chosen a 
member of the historic Institute of France ; 
while his own government conferred upon 
him the coveted title of baronet. 

Sir Humphry Davy, as he was now called, 
died in the prime of life and in the fulness of 
honor and fame. Fond of travel, and con- 



HUMPHRY DAVY — SAFETY-LAMP 131 

tinning to the last his scientific studies^ he 
went to the Continent, and took up his abode 
at Geneva, on the borders of one of the 
loveliest of Swiss lakes. There he had a 
laboratory, where he could work at will, and 
could also indulge his passion for fishing and 
hunting. 

But he was worn out before his time. He 
was attacked by palsy, and passed away at 
Geneva in 1829, in the fifty-first year of his 
age. There he was buried. A simple monu- 
ment reveals where he lies in the foreign 
churchyard ; while a tablet in Westminster 
Abbey keeps alive his memory in the hearts 
of his countrymen. 



132 HEROES AND MARTYRS OF INVENTION 



CHAPTER XII 

JAMES NASMYTH AND THE STEAM-HAMMER 

The roll of modern inventors contains no 
more attractive name than that of the stm^dy 
Scot who invented the marvellous steam- 
hammer. The life of James Nasmyth was 
a romance. His achievements were noble^ 
his success was brilliant^ and his character 
was so cheerful, sunny, upright, and happy, 
that it is a delight to dwell upon it. 

He himself has told us, in words of simple, 
hearty enthusiasm, the story of his boyhood 
and of the triumphs of his manhood. It is 
curious that his very name had a history in 
striking contrast with the actual facts of his 
life. One of his ancestors, it is said, in trying 
to escape from the enemy on a battle-field, 
assumed the disguise of a blacksmith. He 



JAMES NASMYTII — STEAM-HAMMER 133 

was caught^ after a sharp race^ when his 
captor^ perceiving his disguise^ exclaimed, — 

'^Why, ye are nae smyth" (no smith); 
whence came the family name of Nasmyth. 

Now no greater smith ever lived than this 
James of the contrary name, who made the 
steam-hammer. The old warlike family 
motto too, ^^Non arte, sed marte " (Not by 
art, but by war), was so entirely contrary 
to James Nasmyth' s pursuits that he turned 
it entirely around, and made it, " Non marte, 
sed arte" (Not by war, but by art). It 
was, indeed, by his masterful art that he 
achieved triumphs more enduring for the 
good of mankind than any war has ever 
done. Let us see what an unusual kind of a 
boy James Nasmyth was. 

He came of a very practical and mechani- 
cal family. His grandfather was an architect 
of Edinburgh, while his father was not only 
a very fair artist in colors, but was also skil- 
ful as an architect and as a mechanic. James 



134 HEROES AND MARTYRS OF INVENTION 

was born and brought up in the quaint old 
Scottish capital. His mother was a shrewdy 
keen-witted Scotchwoman, who very early in 
her boy's life perceived that he was a '^ very 
noticin' bairn." When James, in his teens, 
was at the Edinburgh High School, his me- 
chanical ingenuity quickly became apparent. 

The favorite toys of the Edinburgh boys 
at that time were spinning-tops and small 
cannon. James thought he could make 
better tops and cannon than they sold at the 
stores. So he set to work with his father's 
foot-lathe, and soon made tops which de- 
lighted his school comrades bej^ond measure. 
He also made little brass cannon which 
worked perfectly, and even out of old keys 
contrived to fashion a small hand-gun. Fly- 
ing kites and paper balloons he easily con- 
structed, and he made himself wondrously 
popular at school by freely supplying his 
mates with these means of enjoying their 
holidays. 



JAMES IS^ASMYTII — STEAM-HAMMER 135 

He soon became deeply interested in 
chemistry. The father of one of his school- 
mates had a chemical laboratory at Leith, a 
mile or so distant from Edinburgh, and to 
this laboratory young Nasmyth was freely 
admitted. When some interesting experi- 
ment was about to be made, Tom Smith, 
Nasmyth' s young friend, would hoist a white 
flag on a pole in the garden at Leith, where- 
at Nasmyth eagerly ran down and took part 
in the experiment. The boys not only had a 
hand in the experiments, but taught them- 
selves how to make each material used in 
them, instead of buying them in the stores. 
Thus Nasmyth soon became a very skilful 
practical chemist. 

At the age of seventeen young Nasmyth 
began to turn his mechanical talents to prac- 
tical account. He made a little steam-engine 
for grinding his father's colors ; he con- 
structed some workshop engines, and the 
model of a condensing engine to be used at 



136 HEROES AIS'D MARTYRS OF INVENTION 

mechanics' institutes ; and after attending 
for four or five years tlie Edinburgh School 
of Arts^ made the model of a steam-carriage 
for railway purposes. For it was just at that 
time, when Nasmyth was nineteen, that the 
possibility of applying steam to land travel 
was on the point of being proved. 

It took Nasmyth four months of absorbing 
labor to complete his steam-carriage, and 
when done it was run successfully on the 
Queensberry Road, near Edinburgh, carrying 
eight passengers, who sat upon low seats only 
three feet from the ground. This seems to 
us now a very rude and uncouth way of trav- 
elling, but when Nasmyth' s steam-carriage 
proved to be a success, it was looked upon as 
a wonder of wonders. 

One of the most important events of 
young Nasmyth's life was when he was ad- 
mitted to the famous works of Henry 
Maudsley in London. Mr. Maudsley was an 
eccentric but kind-hearted man, and very 



JAMES NASMYTH — STEAM-HAMMER 137 

able in meclianical work, and liis reputa- 
tion was world-wide. He had long refused 
to admit any more pupils in his works ; but 
he was so struck with the genius shown in 
the models which Nasmyth displayed to him, 
that he not only accepted the young Scot as 
a pupil, but took him into his own private 
workshop. 

^•^Here I wish you to work," said Maudsley, 
^^ beside me, as my assistant." 

Nasmyth remained with this generous 
patron two years, when Maudsley died. 

Nasmyth was now fully equipped for his 
life-work. He took charge of a large foun- 
dry near Manchester, where he soon acquired 
more than a competence. 

He was one of those who had the rare 
privilege of witnessing the opening of the 
first railway, — that between Manchester and 
Liverpool — and to see Stephenson's ^*^ Rocket" 
draw the first train out of Manchester. The 
establishment of railways gave abundance of 



138 HEROES AND MARTYRS OF INVENTION 

work to Nasmytlij who now made locomo- 
tives for the new companies which rapidly 
sprang up. 

But the great achievement of Nasmyth's 
life was the invention of that powerful 
steam-Iiammer^ which still continues to be a 
marvel to all who see its operation^ at once 
mighty and delicate. It is said of this 
machine that it can chip an egg resting on an 
anvil without breaking it^ while it can also 
deliver a twelve-ton blow which will make a 
whole township tremble. We cannot do 
better than quote Nasmyth's own description 
of this crowning mechanical triumph of his 
life. 

" It consisted of^ firsts a massive anvil oh 
which to rest the work ; second^ a block of 
iron constituting the hammer or blow-giving 
portion ; and third, an inverted steam-cylin- 
der, to whose piston-rod the hammer-block 
was attached. All that was then required to 
produce a most effective hammer was simply 



JAMES ISTASMYTH — STEAM-HAMMER 139 

to admit steam of sufficient pressure into the 
cylinder so as to act on the under side of the 
piston^ and thus to raise the hammer block 
attached to the end of the piston-rod. 

" By a very simple arrangement of a slide 
valve, under the control of an attendant, the 
steam was allowed to escape, and thus permit 
the massive block of iron rapidly to descend 
by its own gravity upon the work then on 
the anvil. Thus, by the more or less rapid 
manner in which the attendant allows the 
steam to enter or escape from the cylinder, 
any required number or any intensity of 
blows can be delivered." 

One of the first uses to which the steam- 
hammer was put was that of the driving of 
piles. There were many mechanics who did 
not believe that it would drive piles faster or 
better than was done by the old method. So 
Nasmyth resolved to have a match between 
his steam-hammer and the ordinary pile- 
driver. Two immense logs were selected, 



140 HEROES AN^D MARTYRS OF INVENTION 

and the two machines began to work at-the 
same moment. The result was that while it 
took the old-fashioned machine twelve hours 
to drive its log to the proper depth, the 
steam-hammer had finished its task in four 
and a half minutes. 

The invention of the steam-hammer not 
only made Nasmyth famous wherever in the 
world the mechanic arts are practised, but 
added quickly and largely to his worldly 
wealth. He was only thirty-one years of 
age, and had already achieved a great life- 
work. 



GEOKGE STEPHENSON - LOCOMOTIVE 141 



CHAPTER XIII 



GEORGE STEPHENSON5 THE INVENTOR OF THE 
RAILWAY LOCOMOTIVE 



In the north of England^ in a district 
through which flows the river Tyne^ and of 
which the principal town is Newcastle^ there 
is a vast region of coal-mines. For a long 
period this region has been a busy scene of 
grimy labor^ with its clusters of villages 
inhabited by the coal-miners^ its railways 
running from the mouths of the coal-pits to 
the river-bankj and its appliances for raising 
the coal from the dark depths of the nether 
earth. 

One of the villages, occupied for the most 
part by miners, is called Dewley Burn. It is 
but a short distance from Newcastle, the 
smoking chimneys of which may be plainly 



142 HEROES AND MARTYRS OF INYENTIOlSr 

descried from its cottage windows. It was at 
Dewley Burn that there livedo just about a 
hundred years ago^, a very remarkable little 
boy — a boy whose father was nothing but 
a humble colliery fireman^ and very poor at 
that ; a boy who had never seen the inside of 
a schoolhouse in his life ; yet who^ even 
before he had reached his teens^, showed un- 
mistakable signs of brilliant genius^ and who 
in after-life was destined to become one of 
the most famous men in the history of the 
world. 

George Stephenson — this was the boy's 
name — was forced to learn the stern realities 
of a life of labor at a very early age. His 
father had six children, and his wages were 
only three dollars a week. Each of his boys, 
therefore, had to go to work just as soon as 
he was old enough to turn his hands to any- 
thing at all. So we find George, when he 
was but seven years old, sent off to the fields 
to tend a herd of cows. The little fellow 



GEORGE STEPHENSON — LOCOMOTIVE 143 

was bare-headed and bare-legged ; his clothes 
scarcely sufficed to cover his active little body. 
But he was quick^ bright, and light-hearted^, 
and always went whistling or singing merrily 
to his daily task. 

Even at that early age George Stephenson's 
fondness for mechanics, which in after-years 
was destined to confer a vast benefit upon the 
whole human race, revealed itself. When he 
had an hour or two to spare he did not spend 
it in idleness or in playing games or stroll- 
ing about with his mates. Instead, he always 
hastened to the engine-room where his father 
was at work. He deligrhted in nothino; so 
much as to watch the movements of the 
engine, and to study the different parts of it, 
and the use of each. The engine seemed to 
his keen mind the most curious and wonder- 
ful thing in the world. He was never tired 
of gazing at it as its every part moved swiftly 
and smoothly up and down or to and fro. 

One day George was in the field just outside 



144 HEROES AND MARTYRS OF INVEXTIOlSr 

the village tending his herd as usual. While, 
however, he kept his eye from time to time 
on the cows, he was observed by a villager to 
be busily working at something with his 
hands. The villager went up to him, and 
found that he had moulded a little engine 
out of clay, and had inserted in his model 
pipes made of hemlock stalks. This was the 
first engine George Stephenson ever built. 
The last that he built, many years after, 
revolutionized the whole trade, commerce, 
and comfort of the earth. 

George Stephenson all through his boyhood 
and youth had a hard life of it, though it 
never was an unhappy one. Early accus- 
tomed to hardship and rugged tasks, he 
worked always blithely, and, indeed, seems 
really to have loved his work. While other 
boys of his age were going to school, he was 
tending cows, ploughing, hoeing potatoes and 
turnips, and finally aiding his father as as- 
sistant fireman on wages of twenty-five cents 



GEORGE STEPHENSON" — LOCOMOTIVE 145 

a day. When he was fifteen he was made 
very proud by being promoted to be a full- 
blown fireman to an engine, on wages of three 
dollars a week. ^^Now/' exclaimed the de- 
lighted youth, when he told his father of 
his promotion, '' I am a made man for life ! '' 
So the hard-working years passed until 
George reached his eighteenth birthday. Up 
to this time, strange to say, he had not had 
an hour's schooling. It is odd to think that 
at eighteen George Stephenson, who a few 
years after was recognized as one of the 
greatest men of science the world ever pro- 
duced, could neither read, write, nor cipher ! 
Yet he was intelligent, keen, and ambitious. 
He was a complete master of the engine, and 
his brain was already teeming with bright 
ideas and with devices for improving the 
machinery then in use. He saw clearly how 
much in need he was of some education, and 
he resolved that, hard as he had to work at 
his trade by day, he would begin to learn 



146 HEROES AND MARTYBS OF INVENTION 

something from books. So^, when his long 
task of twelve hours was done^ he ate a hasty 
supper, and repaired three evenings every 
week to school. In less than a year he had 
learned to read and write, and had mastered 
his arithmetic from cover to cover. 

The next phase of young Stephenson's life 
is a pretty love story. He had now been pro- 
moted to be the brakeman of a large coal- 
mine, and his wages were about five dollars a 
week. Not content with this, he employed 
his leisure evenings in mending shoes. It so 
happened that he had made the acquaintance 
of a pretty maid, who lived at a farm a mile 
or two away from the village. Her name 
was Fanny Henderson. Soon Stephenson 
found himself very much in love with her. 
One day Fanny asked him if he would not 
mend her shoes for her. He accepted the 
task with eager delight. He was so fond of 
the pretty owner of the shoes, that after he 
had mended them, he could not bear to carry 



GEORGE STEPHENSON — LOCOMOTIVE 147 

them back to her at once^ but kept them in 
his pocket for some days as he went to his 
work. Every now and then he would take 
them out and gaze fondly at them, and re- 
turned them at last with a sigh of regret. * 

His love for the fair Fanny stirred him to 
work all the harder, and by the time he was 
twenty-one he had saved up enough money to 
hire and furnish a cottage. Then one morn- 
ing he took Fanny to church, where they 
were quietly married. After the knot was 
tied they both got upon the same horse and 
so rode blithely home to the newly furnished 
cottage. The married life of young Stephen- 
son and his Fanny was very happy, but very 
brief. In a few years the young wife died, 
leaving an only son. This son, Robert, was 
destined, in after years, to rival his father in 
renown as an inventor and engineer. 

George Stephenson, though grief-stricken 
by his great loss, continued to work with all 
his wonted, untiring vigor. In order to give 



148 HEROES AND MARTYRS OF INVENTION 

little Robert the ediiciition of which he him- 
self so sorely felt the need, he added to his 
labor as a brakenian the cleaning of his 
neighbors' clocks and watches. " It was 
thns/' he said after ward^ " that I procured 
the means of educating my little son." 

The time Avas fast comings however, when 
Stephenson, by his genius and energy, was to 
raise himself forever above the pains and 
troubles of poverty. It came about in this 
way. As a boy he had often seen the tram- 
way of parallel rails, upon which the car-loads 
of coal had been drawn by horses from the 
mines to the bank^ of the Tyne. A few years 
later, as we have seen, he had learned all 
about steam-engines, and had mastered the 
structure and powers of tlie perfected steam- 
engine invented by James Watt. The brill- 
iant thought noAV occurred to Stephenson 
that the engine might be so adapted as to 
work upon parallel rails, and miglit be so 
made as to take the place of horses in drag- 



GEORGE STErnENSON — LOCOMOTIVE 149 

ging car-loads. Hitherto the steam-engine 
had been used as a stationary machine. He 
proposed to make it move and travel. He 
set himself the task^ as he said, of " wedding 
the engine to the rail, as man to wife." 

It is not easy to imagine what an enor- 
mous task this was ; what great and various 
difficulties he had to meet and overcome ; 
what violent opposition and prejudices he had 
to baffle and conquer. It was years before 
Stephenson was able to construct a steam- 
locomotive which would actually go on rails. 
When he had succeeded in this, he had yet to 
persuade an unbelieving community that he 
could successfully draw trains of cars with it 
over the parallel rails. 

The first successful trip made by his steam- 
locomotive was made on a little tramway at 
Kitting worth. It drew a train of cars with a 
load of thirty tons, up a steep grade, at the 
rate of four miles an hour. This proved to 
Stephenson that, beyond a doubt, the loco- 



150 HEROES AXD MARTYES OF IXYEXTIO:X 

motive miglit be used for hauling not only 
freight^ but passengers also. At last, a little 
less than sixty years ago, the first regular 
railway line was completed between Manches- 
ter and Liverpool. Upon the new track was 
j)laced a small train of passenger cars, with 
Stephenson's new locomotive, the '^ Rocket," 
puffing in front of it. Railways had become 
an actual fact, and Stephenson's victory was 
complete. 



ROBERT STEPHENSON — BRIDGE-BUILDER 151 



CHAPTER XIV 

ROBERT STEPHENSON;, THE GREAT BRIDGE- 
BUILDER 

It will be remembered that while George 
Stephenson^ the noble-hearted inventor of the 
railway locomotive, was still struggling for a 
livelihood, he lost his young wife, who left 
behind an only infant son. A famous father 
is seldom followed by a son equally famous. 
But the little boy who was thus left mother- 
less became in course of time not less cele- 
brated than George Stephenson himself. The 
two names stand side by side in the bright 
roll of the benefactors of their age/ just as 
they two worked side by side for many years, 
together laboring upon and finally solving 
the problem of the locomotive, and winning 
many other brilliant scientific triumphs. 

The story of Robert Stephenson, indeed, is 



152 HEROES AKD MARTYRS OF INYENTIOIST 

not less interesting and inspiring than that of 
his father. Left without a mother's tender 
care^ tlie boy at a very early age became liis 
father's intimate companion^ and was the joy 
and pride of his father's life. From the first 
he revealed a quick^ bright mind^ and, to his 
father's great delight, showed a taste for 
study, and especially for mechanics. George 
Stephenson had not yet become rich or 
famous. He was still plodding with cheerful 
industry, at his shoe-making and clock-mak- 
ing, varying these occupations with reading 
scientific books and constructing models. He 
had learned by his own experience w^iat an 
obstacle ignorance of books was to getting 
on fast in the w^orld ; and so, just as soon as 
Eobert ^as old enough to go to school, to 
school he was sent. 

But this was not all the early education he 
had. At Newcastle, a short distance from 
their home, there was a library for working 
people, to w^hich George Stephenson secured 



ROBERT STEPHENSON — BRIDGE-BUILDER 153 

admittaDce for his son. Out of school hours^ 
then, you might have seen little Robert trudg- 
ing on the road to the big town, repairing to 
the library, reading for an hour or two, and 
then returning home again. In the winter 
evenings he would sit down at the cosey coal 
fire opposite his father, and would carefully 
repeat to him what he had been reading at 
the library. So the boy in a way taught his 
hard-working father, while impressing upon 
his own mind the results of his reading. Not 
only did they study together, they also made 
models and plans for machinery together. 
Robert proved to be amazingly quick and apt 
in this practical work. Once he made a very 
accurate sun-dial, which his father delightedly 
fixed on the wall over the door of his little 
cottage. 

When Robert was fifteen he went to work 
in the same colliery where his father was now 
employed as engineer. After the day's work 
was over, every evening was spent by the two 



154 HEROES AND MARTYRS OF INVENTION 

in study^ or in discussing useful subjects with 
each other. They often held very exciting 
arguments as to the power of steam, and as 
to the possibility of applying it to locomotion. 
Already in both minds the locomotive was 
beginning to take form and shape. Little by 
little George Stephenson carefully hoarded 
his savings, until he had enough to send 
Eobert to Edinburgh, to the university there. 
It is true that the young man only remained 
at the university six months ; but during that 
brief time he is said to have done as much 
studying as most college boys do in three 
years. Proud indeed was his father when 
Robert returned from Edinburgh with the 
prize for mathematics. It is said that Robert 
learned how to write shorthand before going 
to Edinburgh, and that while at the univer- 
sity he took down every lecture that he heard, 
word for word. 

George Stephenson had now matured his 
plan for a railway locomotive, and had estab- 



ROBERT STEPHElSrSON'— BRIDGE-BUILDER 155 

lished a factory for building locomotives at 
Newcastle. Robert now joined him^ and for 
two years worked hard to make the machine 
a practicable one. Then his health broke 
down from overwork, and he took a long 
voyage to South America. But he did not 
spend his time while away in idleness and 
pleasure-seeking. Ever earnest of purpose, 
and intensely interested in the products and 
forces of the world, he visited the gold and 
silver mines, founded a mining company, 
and planned the machinery for it. 

After an absence of three years, he re- 
turned to England to find his father prepar- 
ing to make the great experiment of running 
a locomotive by steam. He threw himself 
with all the energy of his nature into the 
project, and did more perhaps than even his 
father to perfect the first successful locomo- 
tive, the '^ Rocket." This engine received the 
prize of five hundred pounds offered by the 
new Liverpool and Manchester Railway Com- 



156 HEROES AND MARTYRS OF INVEl!^TION 

pany. It may well be supposed that Robert 
exulted as greatly as his father when at last 
the little ^^ Rocket" sped safely with its first 
train from Manchester to Liverpool. 

But though the world is probably indebted 
as much to Robert as to George Stephenson 
for the inestimable gift of steam locomotion 
by land^ the son won yet greater renown by 
his later triumphs as an engineer. For some 
years he devoted himself to laying out and 
building railway lines in his own country^ 
Belgium, Norway, Switzerland, Germany, Can- 
ada, Egypt, and India. Honors and wealth 
were showered upon him by the grateful na- 
tions which he thus served. By the time he 
had reached middle age he might have retired 
to a life of ease and enjoyment. But Robert 
Stephenson loved. work; idleness would have 
been torture to his vigorous and untiring brain. 

He now turned with youthful energy to the 
construction of great bridges, and in this 
pursuit he achieved many very remarkable 



ROBERT STEPHENSOIN" — BRIDGE-BUILDER 157 

triumphs. Those of our readers who have 
travelled in Canada^ and have* visited Mont- 
real, cannot have failed to gaze with wonder 
at the mighty Victoria Bridge^ which spans 
the St. Lawrence near that historic city. 
This noble structure, with the graded road- 
ways leading to it on either bank^ covers 
a space of but little short of two miles. 
It has been well said that "' in its gigantic 
strength and majestic proportions there is no 
structure to compare with it in ancient or 
modern times/' It consists of a series of 
twenty-five great tubular bridges^, with a 
vast central span springing more than three 
hundred feet. The iron-work which the 
bridge easily uplifts in the air weighs no 
less than ten thousand tons^ and the piers 
comprise stone-work each of eight thousand 
tons weight. It may be safely declared that 
this Victoria Bridge^, designed and built by 
the bold genius of Robert Stephenson, dwarfs 
all the miditiest works of Roman enojineering;. 



158 HEROES AKD MARTYBS OF INVENTION 

Two other bridges of world-wide fame 
were built by Stephenson. One is the 
Highland Bridge, which spans the river 
Tyne at Newcastle very near where both 
George and Robert Stephenson were born ; 
and the other, yet more wonderful, is the 
Britannia Bridge, which at Menai Straits, on 
the Welsh coast, leaps high across a broad 
inlet of the ocean, at such an elevation that 
^M^essels of large burden in full sail can pass 
beneath its lofty arches." 

All these bridges were built on what is 
called the *^Hubular" principle — an idea in- 
vented by Robert Stephenson himself. The 
main structure of the tubular bridge comprises 
a tunnel of wrought-iron, within which the 
railway trains pass to and fro. The Britannia 
Bridge has four of these tunnels or tubes, each 
two hundred and sixty feet long. Besides 
these bridges, Stephenson built one over the 
Damietta branch of the Nile in Egypt, and 
another at Bekat-al-Saba, in the same country. 



ROBERT STEPHENSON — BRIDGE-BUILDER 159 

Even such vast labors did not exhaust 
Robert Stephenson's energies. While super- 
vising: the buildingr of his brid^jes he had 
time to study various systems of water-works^ 
to help Sir Joseph Paxton in his designs for 
the great first World's Exhibition in Hyde 
Parkj and to take his seat in Parliament^ 
where his scientific knowledge enabled him to 
be especially useful. He was also a member 
of many learned and scientific societies^ in all 
of which he took an active part. Nor amid 
all his fame did he forget the humble place of 
his birth. He took down the cottage in 
which he was born^ and caused buildings to 
be erected on the spot where it had stood^, 
which were used as a school for poor boys 
and girls^ and for a mechanics' institute. 

This great and good man died at the early 
age of fifty-six^ and was laid to rest in West- 
minster Abbey, among famous kings, nobles, 
poets, and philosophers. 



160 HEROES AND MAKTrKS OF INVENTION 



CHAPTER XV 

ROBERT FULTON AND THE STEAMBOAT 

There are few more interesting or dra- 
matic stories in the history of science than 
that which relates to the invention of steam- 
boats. This story, curiously enough, reaches 
far back into the remote past and among 
ancient peoples. The paddle-wheel, for in- 
stance, by w^hich steamboats are propelled 
even down to our own day, is said to have 
been known to the ancient Egyptians, and to 
have been used by them on the river Nile. 
The Chinese were probably acquainted with 
it as far back at least as the seventh century. 
Twenty years before Columbus crossed the 
Atlantic on his voyage of discovery, pictures 
of paddle-Avheels for the moving of vessels 
were to be seen in Europe. Roger Bacon, 



ROBERT FULTON — STEAMBOAT. 161 

seven hundred years ago^ mentioned this de- 
vice as one well suited to the navigating of 
rivers. 

In the seventeenth century dim hints were 
given that other agencies than the human 
muscle might be used as the power for the 
moving of small vessels. Denis Papin^ the 
famous French inventor^ for instance, pro- 
posed that the oars of boats should be moved 
by heat. Savery shortly after declared his 
belief that the rude little steam-engine which 
he had invented might be used to propel 
paddle-wheels. In 1724 John Dickens as- 
serted that a vessel could be driven against 
wind and tide by forcing water through its 
stern and by firing gunpowder to move the 
engines. James Watt invented several de- 
vices which led almost directly to the idea of 
the steamboat. The Marquis de Jouffroy in 
France, Fitch and Rumsey in America, and 
Miller and Symington in Scotland, clearly 
perceived that it was possible to apply steam 



162 HEROES AND MARTYRS OF INVENTION 

to lake and river navigation, long before the 
steamboat was finally perfected. 

The very first steamboat which actually 
puffed its way over the water was built by 
James Symington, and was launched on a 
bleak autumn morning in 1788 on the Scot- 
tish lake of Dalswinton. On board the little 
craft, as it sped over the waves at the then 
astounding rate of five miles an hour, were a 
number of famous men. There were Alex- 
ander Nasmyth, a famous artist, the father 
of James Nasmyth who invented the steam- 
hammer; Henry Brougham, afterward Lord 
High Chancellor of England ; and Robert 
Burns, soon to be known through the world 
as a great poet. But, curiously enough, 
though Symington's steamboat proved that 
steam could be used to propel vessels, the 
idea was not then adopted and followed up. 
After several more trials Symington's device 
fell into disuse. Its immense importance 
was not perceived. 



ROBERT FULTON — STEAMBOAT 163 

It was the task of Robert Fulton, an 
American, to establish for all time the fact 
that steam navigation could be made practi- 
cal and permanent. Robert Fulton was a 
native of Pennsylvania, and in early life re- 
vealed a marked talent as an artist. He 
took lessons in painting, and for many years 
pursued his art with ardor. His parents 
were poor, yet Fulton managed to procure 
enough money to go to Europe, where at 
twenty-one we find him studying under the 
great court painter, Benjamin West. Him- 
self an American, West found a pride in 
guiding his bright-eyed young countryman in 
his efforts to become a good artist. But 
while in England, Fulton seems to have been 
diverted from art in order to study mechanics. 
He soon showed that his genius lay in the 
direction of inventing. At first he aided the 
Duke of Bridgewater in the construction of 
the canal known by that nobleman's name, 
inventing inclined planes for locks for the 



164 HEROES AND MARTYRS OF INVENTION 

passage of canal-boats. Then he invented a 
mill for the sawing of marble^ and new 
methods of making ropes. 

It was at this time that the experiments of 
Symington and others in applying steam to 
navigation were creating a great deal of 
attention in England^ and Fulton soon be- 
came absorbed in this new problem. He was 
a young man of sensitive and enthusiastic 
nature, somewhat frail in health, but en- 
dowed with a keen, quick intellect and a 
courageous, persistent spirit. He made up 
his mind that he himself would establish 
finally and forever the possibility of naviga- 
tion by steam. Fulton was an ardent lover 
of his native land as well as an inventive 
genius. As he thought with glowing pride 
of the fifty thousand miles of navigable 
rivers which flowed through our Western 
States, inviting to them population, capital, 
and business energy, he saw that the steam- 
boat, if it could be perfected, would be the 



ROBERT FULTON — STEAMBOAT 165 

means of developing those vast, rich, and 
fertile Western lands. 

So he set to work with a will, and devoted 
himself exclusively to the problem of steam 
navigation for fourteen years. At the age of 
thirty-one he repaired to Paris. His fame as 
an engineer was already great, and Edward 
Livingston, then the American Minister to 
France, and a very enlightened, liberal, and 
public-spirited man, invited him to become an 
inmate of his house. Fulton lived for some 
years under Mr. Livingston's hospitable roof, 
all the time working at his task with all his 
might. He overcame many obstacles, and 
rose with renewed energy from many fail- 
ures. He sought the advice of the great 
inventors of the day, such as Watt and 
Cartwright, who gladly lent their aid to the 
bright young toiler. He made many experi- 
ments, and on one occasion a steamboat 
which he had built was launched on the river 
Seine. This, however, did not work well. 



166 HEROES AWD MARTYRS OF USTYENTION 

A less resolute spirit than Fulton's might 
have despaired ; but he kept straight on, un- 
daunted by his want of success. When in 
process of time his project came to the notice 
of the great Napoleon^ that famous man de- 
clared that " it was capable of changing the 
face of the entire world." 

At last Fulton became satisfied that he 
could build and launch a successful steam- 
boat. His good and generous friend, Mr. 
Livingston, had not lost faith in him, and 
shared his confidence. Mr. Livingston gave 
Fulton a large sum of money with which to 
build a steamboat on his latest plan, and 
Fulton sailed for New York. There he at 
once set about carrying out his scheme. This 
time the steamboat which he constructed 
seemed to him to fulfil every condition of 
success. 

This steamboat he named the '^ Clermont." 
It was on a morning in August, 1807, that 
the " Clermont," all completed, with her engine 




Ph 



O 

(JO 

C 
D 



H 

H 

C 



ROBERT FULTON — STEAMBOAT 167 

duly equipped and fixed^ — a novel sight for 
the lookers-on to see^ — lay moored at lier 
dock in the North River. The momentous 
day for her first trip had arrived. A crowd 
assembled at the dock to see her start. 
Fulton, with beating heart, stood on the little 
deck, surrounded by a group of curious and 
anxious friends. The word was given, the en- 
gine was started, and the " Clermont " pushed 
out upon the stream. Then, after going a 
little way, the boat suddenly stopped. It was 
a moment of harrowing suspense to the 
brave inventor. A slight hitch in the 
machinery was speedily discovered. It was 
quickly set right, and the " Clermont," amid 
murmurs of wonder and delight, resumed her 
voyage. 

As she steamed up the Hudson, by the 
Palisades, between the lofty banks of 
Yonkers and Tarrytown, past the wooded 
heights of West Point, the country people 
from miles around gathered on the shore on 



168 HEKOES AND MARTYRS OF INVENTION 

either side to witness her progress. They 
were bewildered and terrified. The " Cler- 
mont/' indeed^ seemed to their eyes " di mon- 
ster moving on the water^ defying the winds 
and tide, and breathing flames and smoke." 
When the crews of the river boats heard the 
rumble of her machinery and the splashing 
of her paddles, and saw the steam and 
sparks bursting from her valves and funnel, 
they flew below-deck in their fright ; or^ pros- 
trating themselves on deck, prayed to be 
protected from " the horrible creature which 
was marching on the tides and lighting its 
path by the fires which it vomited." 

The " Clermont/' however, reached Albany 
in safety, and Fulton and his friends stepped 
exultantly on shore. His great end, after 
so many years of difficulty, trial, and perse- 
verance, was at last accomplished. Steam 
navigation had become a fact. The great 
test had been successful ; and thenceforth all 
the waters of the earth were to swarm with 



EGBERT FULTON— STEAMBOAT 169 

steam-vessels; of which the little ^^ Clermont " 
was the parent and the pioneer. 

After thisj Fulton built other steamboats^ 
one of which was a steam-frigate. But^ as is 
the case with most great inventors^ no sooner 
was he successful than dishonest men at- 
tempted to reap for themselves the reward of 
his long labors. His patents were disputed, 
and he was involved in a long series of weary 
lawsuits. Deeply suffering under these vexa- 
tions, his sensitive nature and frailty of con- 
stitution brought him to the grave, and he 
died in 1815, at the age of forty-nine. Ful- 
ton was known as a man of social feelings 
and generous nature, and his death called 
forth general mourning throughout the land 
of which he had always been so proud, and 
which honored him as one of the foremost 
inventors and benefactors of the time. 



170 HEROES AND MARTYRS OF INVENTION 



CHAPTER XVI 

THE STRUGGLES OF CHARLES GOODYEAR 

Never did any man work harder^ suffer 
more keenly^ or remain more steadfast to one 
great purpose of life, than did Charles Good- 
year. The story of his life — for the most 
part mournful — teems with touching inter- 
est. No inventor ever struggled against 
greater or more often returning obstacles, or 
against repeated failures more overwhelming. 
Goodyear is often compared, as a martyr and 
hero of invention, to Bernard Palissy the 
potter. He is sometimes called " the Palissy 
of the nineteenth century." But his suffer- 
ings were more various, more bitter, and 
more long enduring than ever were even 
those of Palissy ; while the result of his 
long, unceasing labors was infinitely more 



THE STRUGGLES OF CHARLES GOODYEAR 171 

precious to the world. For if Palissy restored 
the art of enamelling so as to produce beau- 
tiful works of art^ Goodyear perfected a 
substance which gives comfort and secures 
health to millions of human beings. 

Charles Goodyear was born at New Haven, 
Connecticut, in the first year of the present 
century. He was the eldest of the six chil- 
dren of a leading hardware merchant of that 
place, a man both of piety and of inventive 
talent. When Charles was a boy, his father 
began the manufacture of hardware articles, 
and at the same time carried on a farm. 
He often required his son's assistance, so 
that Charles's schooling was limited. He 
was very fond of books, however, from an 
early age, and instead of playing with his 
mates, devoted most of his leisure time to 
reading. 

It was even while he was a schoolboy that 
his attention was first turned to the material, 
the improvement of ^ which for common uses 



172 HEROES AND MARTYRS OF INVENTION 

became afterwards his life-work. " He hap- 
pened to take up a thin scale of India-rubber/' 
says his biographer^, " peeled from a bottle, 
and it was suggested to his mind that it 
would be a very useful fabric if it could be 
made uniformly so thin, and could be so pre- 
pared as to prevent its melting and sticking 
together in a solid mass." Often afterward 
he had a vivid presentiment that he was 
destined by Providence to achieve these re- 
sults. 

The years of his youth and early manhood 
were spent in the hardware trade in Philadel- 
phia and then in Connecticut ; and at twenty- 
four he was married to a heroic young wife, 
who shared his trials, and was ever to him a 
comforting and encouraging spirit. From 
boyhood he was always devout and pure in 
habits. On one occasion, soon after his mar- 
riage, he wrote to his wife while absent from 
her: ^^I have quit smoking, chewing, and 
drinking all in one day. You cannot form an 



THE STRUGGLES OF CHARLES GOODYEAR 173 

idea of the extent of this last evil in this 
city [New York] among the young men." 

Charles Goodyear' s misfortunes began early 
in his career. He failed in business, his 
health broke down, and through life there- 
after he suffered from almost continual 
attacks of dyspepsia. He was, moreover, 
a small, frail man, with a weak constitution. 
He was imprisoned for debt after his failure ; 
nor was this the only time that he found 
himself within the walls of a jail. That was 
almost a frequent experience with him in 
after life. 

It was under discouragements like these 
that Goodyear began his long series of experi- 
ments in India-rubber. Already this peculiar 
substance — a gum that exudes from a certain 
kind of very tall tree, which is chiefly found 
in South America — had been manufactured 
into various articles, but it had not been 
made enduring, and the uses to which it 
could be put were very limited. 



174 HEROES AND MARTYRS OF INVENTION 

There is no space here to follow Goodyear' s 
experiments in detail. He entered upon 
them with the ardor of a fanatic and the 
faith of a devotee. But he very soon found 
that the difficulties in his way were great and 
many. He was bankrupt, in bad health, with 
a growing family dependent on him, and no 
means of support. Yet he persevered, 
through years of wretchedness, to the very 
end. It is a striking fact that his very first 
experiment was made in a prison cell. 

During the long period occupied by his re- 
peated trials of invention he passed through 
almost every calamity to which human flesh 
is heir. Again and again he was thrown into 
prison. Repeatedly he saw starvation staring 
him and his gentle wife and his poor little 
children in the face. He was reduced many 
times to the very last extreme of penury. 
His friends sneered at him, deserted him, 
called him mad. He was forced many times 
to beg the loan of a few dollars, with no pros- 



THE STRUGGLES OF CHARLES GOODYEAR 175 

pect of repayment. One of his children died 
in the dead of winter^ when there was no 
fuel in the cheerless house. A gentleman was 
once asked what sort of a looking man Good- 
year was. " If you meet a man/' was the 
reply J " who wears an India-rubber coat, cap^ 
stock, vest, and shoes, with an India-rubber 
money purse without a cent in it, that is 
Charles Goodyear." 

Once, while in the extremity of want, 
when he was living at Greenwich, near New 
York, he met his brother-in-law, and said, 
"Give me ten dollars, brother; I have 
pawned my last silver spoon to pay my 
fare to the city." 

" You must not go on so ; you cannot live 
in this way," said the other. 

" I am going to do better," replied Good- 
year cheerily. 

It was by accident at last that he hit upon 
the secret of how to make India-rubber dur- 
able. He was talking one day to several 



176 HEROES AND MARTYRS OF INVENTION 

visitors^ and in his ardor making rapid gest- 
ures, when a piece of rubber which he was 
holding in his hand accidentally hit against a 
hot stove. To his amazement, instead of 
melting, the gum remained stiff and charred, 
like leather. He again applied great heat to 
a piece of rubber, and then nailed it outside 
the door, where it was very cold. The next 
morning he found that it was perfectly flexi- 
ble ; and this was the discovery which led to 
that successful invention which he had strug- 
gled through so many years to perfect. The 
main value of the discovery lay in this^ that 
while the gum would dissolve in a moderate 
heat, it both remained hard and continued to 
be flexible when submitted to an extreme 
heat. This came to be known as the " vul- 
canization '' of India-rubber. 

Two years were still to elapse, however, 
before Goodyear could make practical use of 
his great discovery. He had tired every- 
body out by his previous frequent assertions 



THE STRUGGLES OF CHARLES GOODYEAR 177 

that liis invention had been perfected, when 
it had until now always proved a failure. 
Many a time he had gone to his friends, de- 
claring that he had succeeded, so that when 
he really had made the discovery nobody be- 
lieved in it. 

He was still desperately poor and in 
wretched health. Yet he moved to Woburn, 
in Massachusetts, resolutely continuing his 
experiments there. He had no money, and 
so baked his India-rubber in his wife's oven 
and saucepans, or hung it before the nose of 
her tea-kettle. Sometimes he begged the use 
of the factory ovens in the neighborhood 
after the day's work was over, and sold his 
children's very school-books in order to sup- 
ply himself with the necessary gum. At this 
time he lived almost exclusively on money gifts 
from pitying friends, who shook their heads 
in their doubts of his sanity. Often his 
house had neither food nor fuel in it; his 
family were forced to go out into the woods 



178 HEROES AND MARTYRS OF INVENTION 

to get wood to burn. " They dug their pota- 
toes before they were half-grown^ for the sake 
of having something to eat." 

Goodyear was terribly afraid that he 
should die before he could make the world 
perceive the great uses to which his discov- 
ery might be applied. What he was toiling 
for was neither fame nor fortune^ but only to 
confer a vast benefit on his fellow-men. 

At last, after infinite struggles, the absorb- 
ing purpose of his life was attained. India- 
rubber was introduced under his patents, and 
soon proved to have all the value he had, in 
his wildest moments, claimed for it. Success 
thus crowned his noble efforts, which had con- 
tinued unceasingly through ten years of self- 
imposed privation. India-rubber was now seen 
to be capable of being adapted to at least five 
hundred uses. It could be made " as pliable as 
kid, tougher than ox-hide, as elastic as whale- 
bone, or as rigid as flint." But, as too often 
happens, his great discovery enriched neither 



THE STRUGGLES' OF CHARLES GOODYEAR 179 

Goodyear nor his family. It soon gave em- 
ployment to sixty thousand artisans^ and 
annually produced articles in this country 
alone worth eight millions of dollars. 

Happily the later years of the noble, self- 
devoted inventor were spent at least free from 
the grinding penury and privations of his 
years of uncertainty and toil. He died in 
his sixtieth year (1860), happy in the thought 
of the magnificent boon he had given to man- 
kind. 



180 HEROES AND MARTYRS OF INVENTION 



CHAPTER XVII 

ELIAS HOWE AND THE SEWING-MACHINE 

In the enlightened days of the nineteenth 
century the great inventors enjoy a brighter 
and sunnier lot than did those who lived 
in ruder and darker times. The modern in- 
ventor is seldom the victim of ignorance. He 
is no longer hunted down by fierce and fanat- 
ical superstition. He is no longer thought to 
be a sorcerer ; for his magic is seen to be the 
product of intellect and reason. He is now 
courted and popular, and shares with the 
great soldiers, statesmen, and explorers the 
gratitude of nations. Yet modern inventors 
have by no means always found the path to 
success and wealth an easy one. If the in- 
ventors of the olden time often suffered vio- 
lence and death; those of a later period 



ELIAS HOWE — SEWmG-MACHINE 181 

have sometimes been forced to face miscon- 
ception and ridicule^, poverty and long endur- 
ing privations^ injustice and robbery, before 
they reached the goal of their ambition. 

A striking illustration of this fact is found 
in the life of Elias Howe, the inventor of the 
sewing-machine ; and in that life, also, w^e are 
able to discover qualities as noble and brave, 
a perseverance as sturdy and enduring, as 
were seen in Palissy, Arkwright, and Watt. 
Elias Howe's life, indeed, presents a touching 
picture of trials and troubles long continued, 
borne with courage and patience, and crowned 
at last with a grand success. 

It is interesting that many of the foremost 
of modern American inventors were born and 
brought up, not in the busy cities, but among 
the green hills and valleys of the country. 
Eli Whitney, W. T. G. Morton (who claimed 
to have discovered the use of ether in deaden- 
ing pain), and Elias Howe were all sons of 
New England farmers. Howe was a native 



182 HEROES AND MARTYRS OF INVENTION 

of the beautiful town of Spencer, which is 
spread on the crest of high hills in central 
Massachusetts. His father was both farmer 
and miller ; and Howe's boyhood's years were 
spent amid quiet rustic scenes. When Elias 
was a child, no one would have guessed that 
he was destined to do any great thing in the 
world ; for he was small of size, feeble in 
health, and suffered from lameness in one 
foot from his birth. His father was very 
poor, and as soon as the little lad was able to 
work at all, he helped his father in the mill 
and on the farm. 

When he was eleven years old, Elias was 
" put out," or apprenticed, to a neighboring 
farmer ; but in a short time, being unable to 
endure the hard farm-work, he returned for 
a while to his father's mill. Already he 
began to take an interest in tools and machin- 
ery. He mended furniture, and during his 
spare hours spent his time in learning the use 
of such tools as his father had, and making 



ELIAS HOWE — SEWIISrG-MACHINE 183 

all sorts of things with them. His fondness 
for mechanics developed rapidly^ and^ at six- 
teen^ resolute of will though frail of body, he 
set out from his country home and repaired 
to the great manufacturing town of Lowell. 
He worked for two years in the Lowell mills 
on small wages, at the same time studying 
and mastering the details of the machinery 
which was used in them. 

Then he moved to Waltham, and went to 
work in the mills there. At Waltham was 
working, at the same time, a cousin of Elias 
Howe, who has since become famous both as 
a statesman and as a soldier. This was 
Nathaniel P. Banks. The two cousins little 
thought, when they were toiling at the Wal- 
tham looms, that one would become Speaker 
of the National House of Eepresentatives, 
Governor of Massachusetts, and a major-gener- 
al in the army ; and that the other would grow 
to be forever famous as one of the greatest 
inventors of all time. 



184 HEROES AND MARTYRS OF INVENTION 

While he was in the mills Elias grew more 
and more interested in machinery^ and he 
soon began to dream of being an inventor. 
This led him^ when he was about twenty 
years old, to repair to Boston, where he found 
an employer who was an inventor, and who 
kept a shop in Cornhill. In this shop Elias 
earned nine dollars a week. He now fell in 
love, and although he was earning but a small 
pittance, he was imprudent enough to get 
married. The early days of his wedded life 
were full of hardship and privation ; but all 
was borne with cheerful courage by him and 
his young wife. Unfortunately his health, 
never strong, broke down completely, and his 
wife and child were brought to the brink of 
starvation. 

It was while their fortunes were at this low 
ebb that the idea struck Elias Howe which 
was destined to give him a new object in life, 
and which was to lead him, through many 
misfortunes and miseries, to fame and for- 



ELI AS HOWE — SEWING-MACHINIE 185 

tune. His awakening to the knowledge of 
his powers of invention was as sudden as that 
of Edmund Cartwright^ who invented the 
power-loom, and as romantic as that of Wil- 
liam Lee, the inventor of the stocking-frame. 
Love, indeed, was the wizard which called his 
inventive genius into action. Howe sat by 
his young wife one day in their dismal lodg- 
ing, not knowing where the next day's food 
would come from, and with starvation staring 
them in the face. The wife was busily sev> 
ing, and Howe was watching her fingers as 
they busily plied the needle. All of a suddeii 
the question occurred to him whether a ma- 
chine could not be made, which, imitating the 
human fingers, would take stitches many 
times faster than his wife could do? By a 
little thought, it seemed to him that such a 
machine might take fifty stitches while his 
wife was taking one. 

This idea, when once it had got fixed in his 
mind, never left it. He went to work at 



186 HEROES AND MARTYRS OF INVENTION 

once^ thinking out the plan of such a ma- 
chine. He first attempted to attain his 
object with a needle which had its eye in the 
middle, and which was sharp at both ends. 
Then, with difficulty, he made, with pieces of 
wood and bits of wire, a rude model, which, 
however rude it was, convinced him that, 
with toil and patience, a real working sewing- 
machine could be constructed. 

He moved to Cambridge, where his father 
was living, and he now had the good-fortune 
to fall in with a friend, George Fisher, who 
lent him five hundred dollars to continue 
his experiments, and soon after took Howe 
and his family into his own house. After the 
lapse of six months Howe had completed his 
first machine, which was about a foot and a 
half high. He showed it to the Boston 
tailors, but some of them laughed him to 
scorn, others feared that it would ruin the 
tailoring trade if it were brought into use ; 
not one of them would purchase it. Then 



ELIAS HOWE -SEWING-MACHINE 187 

came a period of bitter trials and ill-healtli, 
during which Howe depended upon charity 
for sustenance. But not then^ or ever, did 
misfortune discourage the soul or shake the 
faith of Elias Howe. 

We see him, just as soon as he could raise 
as much as a pittance, taking passage in the 
steerage of a sailing-vessel for London, cook- 
ing his own food as he made the cheerless 
voyage across the ocean ; giving the use of his 
machine to a capitalist in London, who, as 
soon as his workmen had learned how to 
manage the sewing-machine, cast Howe 
adrift ; Howe pawning his clothes to pay 
for the wretched supply of beans which 
barely kept body and soul together; spend- 
ing four months in making a machine, which 
he sold for twenty-five dollars ; and, at last, 
drawing his baggage in a hand-cart to the 
vessel in which he had engnged himself as a 
steerage cook, and returning weary, but never 
despairing, ta his native land. 



188 HEROES AND MARTYRS OF INYENTION 

He arrived in New York to learn that liis 
devoted wife was dying at Cambridge ; and 
he had not money enough to make the jour- 
ney thither. He earned it in a New York 
machine shop, and reached his wife's bedside 
just in time to see her die. So poor was he 
that he was forced to borrow a suit of clothes 
in which to follow her to her grave. A few 
days after, he heard that the ship which con- 
tained all his worldly goods had gone to the 
bottom of the sea. 

Yet Elias Howe stoutly persevered, and 
rose bravely above all his difficulties. At 
last the sewing-macliine was introduced, suc- 
cessfully established, and came into rapid 
demand on every hand. At the age of 
thirty-five his income from this great inven- 
tion was two hundred thousand dollars a 
year. At forty-eight he was worth two 
millions. His later life, rich and famous 
though he was, was not one of ease and idle 
luxury. He dispensed generous and quiet 



ELIAS HOWE— SEWING-MACHINE 189 

charities ; he was kind and benevolent, and 
especially so toward women in distress ; and 
he was earnestly patriotic. 

For this millionnaire, lame as he was, and 
wearied as he well might have been after such 
a life of toil and trials, was one of the first 
to respond to the call to arms at the outbreak 
of the civil war. He enlisted in the army as 
a private ; shouldered his musket, and went 
into the ranks; and when, on one occasion, 
the pay of his regiment (the Seventeenth Con- 
necticut) was behindhand, he himself promptly 
advanced the thirty thousand dollars needed 
to supply the wants of his fellow-soldiers. 
Not long after the close of the war, Elias 
Howe, not yet an old man, died, leaving the 
record of a noble, generous, upright life, and 
a name ever to be honored among the great 
inventors of the age. 



190 HEROES AND MARTYRS OF INVENTION 



CHAPTER XVIII 

IRON AND ITS WORKERS 

With the advent of iron the whole face 
of human life was changed. By its aid^ it 
became possible to erect secure dwellings^ so 
that man ceased to be a wanderer and settled 
down permanently on one spot. By its 
meanSj the art of agriculture took its rise. 
The creation of a home and a farm resulted 
in settlements, hamlets, villages, thriving 
towns, and, finally, in the political and social 
relations which lie at the base of modern 
civilization. 

When, indeed, we consider the wide range 
of uses to which iron can be put, uses so 
opposite as " a steel pen and a railroad, the 
needle of a mariner's compass and a Krupp 
cannon, a surgeon's lancet and a steam-en- 



IRON AND ITS WORKERS 191 

gine, the delicate mainspring of a watch and 
an iron-clad man of war^ a pair of scissors 
and a Nasmyth hammer^ a lady's ear-ring and 
a tubular bridge/' we can see what a vast 
change it has wrought in the material condi- 
tion of the human race. 

Of the original discovery that this dull 
and unlovely metal, hidden in its rough ore, 
and concealed by its jagged matrix, could be 
turned to innumerable uses by man, there is 
no authentic trace, or scarcely a credible 
tradition. There is, indeed, an ancient story 
that the qualities of iron were first brought 
to light by the burning of a forest in 
Greece ; that the charcoal thus formed 
turned the ore of a mine beneath into the 
malleable metal. Bnt this story has the 
character of dim legend rather than of 
proved history. 

The first certain fact about iron is this, 
that its discovery marked the beginning of 
the epoch, in man's industrial progress, which 



192 HEROES AND MARTYRS OF INVENTION 

has lasted down to the present day. After 
centuries of dispute^ men of science are now 
agreed in dividing the natural history of 
human civilization into three ages^ according 
to the material of which the implements used 
in each age were made. 

First, there was the epoch of stone, in 
which the weapons and utensils were of wood, 
bone, and yet more frequently of stone and 
flint. The second age was that of bronze, in 
which a metal composed of copper and tin 
took the place of the ruder and simpler 
materials of old. Bronze, of course, with its 
greater hardness, and its capacity of being to 
some degree, at least, sharpened, afforded 
implements far more effective in the felling 
of trees, the hewing of stones, the building 
of boats, and the tilling of land, than those 
which it replaced. Then came the third 
epoch, that of the mysterious metal, iron. 

No doubt these periods somewhat over- 
lapped each other. In the bronze age, flint 



IRON AND ITS WORKERS 193 

and bones were still somewhat used; for 
bronze was expensive, and could only be em- 
ployed sparingly. It was the same in the 
early part of the iron age. Stone and bronze 
implements survived for a while^ even after 
iron had not only been found, but smelted 
and forged into practical use. 

With iron, however, the human race 
started forth upon a new career, and took 
its first step upwards towards the civilization 
of to-day. 

Iron has never been displaced by any 
other metal or natural agency. It is still 
" the soul of manufacture/' still the basis 
upon which the greatest discoveries of mod- 
ern times are built up. 

There is nothing more striking in the his- 
tory of industry than the eagerness with which 
men, as soon as they found it, seized on, glori- 
fied, and multiplied the capacities of iron. 
Gold, with all its glitter, beauty, and precious 
value, sank into the background before this 



194 HEROES AND MARTYRS OF INVENTION 

powerful though grimy and uncouth rival. 
When Croesus was boasting of his vast golden 
treasures, the wise Solon retorted on him, — 

^^If another comes that hath better iron 
than you^ he will be master of all that gold." 

Wheii^ in the Seven Years' War, an alche- 
mist offered to convert all the Duke of Bruns- 
wick's iron into gold^ that wise warrior 
replied, — 

" By no means. I want all the iron I can 
find to resist my enemies. As for gold, I can 
get it from England." 

So late, indeed, as the time of the Enghsh 
■ Edward the Third, the pots, spits^ and frying- 
pans of the royal kitchen were considered to 
be among the king's jewels. The nations 
which used iron weapons against those who 
did not were the conquering nations ; and 
always, in the wars, the army which fouglit 
with the most and best iron weapons over- 
came their foes. Wherever a people with 
iron came into collision with a people who 



IRON AND ITS WORKERS 195 

hud only stone and bronze, the former extir- 
pated and replaced the latter. 

One of the most signal instances of the 
triumphs of iron is seen in the foundation, by 
its use in war, of the once mighty Turkish 
Empire. The Turks were originally the 
wretched, hopeless slaves of a barbarous 
Oriental ruler. But they lived in an iron 
district, and they were set at work by their 
master, forging weapons of iron for his wars. 
At last, an able and valiant Turk persuaded 
his fellow-slaves to Use the weapons they thus 
made to secure their own liberties. They 
poured down from their mountain defiles, as- 
sailed the tyrant and his legions, and thus 
won their freedom. ^^For centuries after," 
says an account of this thrilling event, " the 
Turkish nation continued to celebrate their 
liberation by an annual ceremony, in which 
a piece of iron was heated in the fire, and a 
smith's hammer was successively handled by 
the prince and his nobles." 



196 HEROES AND MARTYRS OF IlSryEKTION 

The Philistines knew well the advantage 
held by a people who forged and tised 
weapons of iron. We read in the Bible 
that^ in completing their conquest of the 
Israelites^ they captured and carried off all 
the smiths in Judea 5 " for the Philistines 
said, Lest the Hebrews make them swords or 
spears. But the Israelites went down to the 
Philistines to sharpen every man his share, 
his coulter, and his axe, and his mattocks." 

When the tribes and nations found out the 
uses of iron, they valued it so preciously that, 
in their ignorance and superstition, they were 
tempted to worship it as something sacred 
and divine. The Romans called it '^ Mars," 
after their god of war; and Captain Cook 
tells us that the New Zealanders of the last 
century were ready to pay homage to the 
axe, as to a deity, to offer sacrifices to the 
saw, and to make an idol of the knife. The 
inventor of the saw, indeed, was exalted by 
the Greeks to a seat among their gods. 



IRON" AND ITS WORKERS 197 

It naturally followed from this veneration 
for iron^ a homage awarded to it alone among 
metals^ that a lofty place should be given by 
common consent to the workers in iron. In 
remote ages^ therefore^ and indeed^ in ages 
not very remote^ the smith was truly a hero 
among his fellows. The ancient smith was 
honored on all occasions with specLil honors 
and privileges. He was a man of rare and 
various accomplishments. 

"He made nails/' says a recent writer, 
" and shod horses ; he fashioned axes, saws, 
adzes, chisels, augers, and hammers for the 
mechanics, and spades and hoes for the farm- 
ers ; he devised bolts and chains for the 
castle-gates of the great barons, and fasten- 
ings for their bridges and portcullises. But 
especially was the smith valued as the artifi- 
cer of the weapons and appliances of war 
and of barbaric sports. He made and 
mended the weapons used in the chase and 
in war, the gavelocks, bills, and battle-axes ; 



198 HEROES AND MARTYRS OF INVENTION 

he tipped the bowmen's arrows^ and furnished 
spear-heads for the men-at-arms. But, above 
all, he forged the mail-coats and cuirasses of 
the chiefs, and welded those huge swords on 
the temper and quality of which life, honor, 
and victory depended on the battle-field." 

In the Anglo-Saxon period of English 
history, the smith was indeed a mighty man. 
He sat at royal tables, below the court chap- 
lain, and above the court physician. At the 
court of Wales it was provided that the smith 
was entitled to a draught of every kind of 
liquor that was brought into the king's din- 
ing-hall. Special laws guarded the safety of 
his person. Once a Scottish smith committed 
a crime for which the penalty was death. 
But so precious were his services to the chief 
of his clan, that the latter ordered that two 
weavers should be hanged in his stead. 

The common people often attributed to the 
smith supernatural power. He who could 
forge swords like the sword " Excalibur " of 



IPtOX AND ITS WORKERS 199 

King Arthur and the sword ^^Joyeuse" of 
Charlemagne, weapons which were them- 
selves regarded as inanimate heroes, and had 
names as if they were living warriors, must, 
thought the Saxon churl, be endowed with 
magical powers. The names of the great 
smiths of the Saxon and mediaeval times are 
as familiar in legend and chronicle as are 
those- of the kings and the Crusaders. 
Weland, the smith, is closely bound up with 
the heroic traditions of King Arthur. The 
dark smith of Drontheim is the hero of 
Norwegian tales. Henry Ferrers, the smith 
who went in William the Conqueror's train, is 
almost as renowned as the Conqueror him- 
self ; and his descendant, the present Earl 
Ferrers, bears the sign of his origin from the 
anvil, in the six horse-shoes which appear on 
his coat"Of-arms. 

There are few more brilliant names in the 
annals of industrial art than that of Andrea 
de Ferrera, who forged, in the Highlands of 



200 HEROES AKD MARTYRS OF INVENTION 

Scotland^ swords wliicli rivalled in their fine 
temper and ductile strength^ the famous 
blades of Damascus^ Milan^ and Toledo. 

In the middle ages in England^ the smith 
had become by all odds the most important 
and skilful personage in the working commu- 
nity. His achievements w^ere now no longer 
confined to the making of implements, 
weapons, and armor. He seemed indeed to 
be " the rivet which held society together." 
He was the farrier and veterinary surgeon, 
the dentist and sometimes the doctor, the 
parish clerk and the news-monger of his 
district. The smithy was the universal 
resort where to receive and discuss the 
tidings of the day; and of all those who 
discussed the news the smith was by far 
the most learned and the most respectfully 
listened to. The smithy was thus " the very 
eye and tongue of the village." 

In early times, the surnames of men were 
often derived from their callings ; and, as the 



IKON AND ITS WORKERS 201 

smith was the earliest and most highly con- 
sidered of all men who worked with their 
hands, so the name of Smith became, and 
has continued to this day, the most fre- 
quently met with of all English surnames. 
Not only is this true of English names ; in 
other tongues, we find that the equivalent of 
" Smith " is more common than other names. 
" Schmidt " in German, " Cowan" in Scottish, 
^^Fabri" in Italian, ^^Lefevre" in French, 
mean precisely what Smith means in English. 
Our modern ^^Mr. Smith," therefore, need 
not blush for his name, nor be nettled by the 
witticisms and amusement with which it is 
sometimes greeted. For his surname is high 
and ancient. He can boast of an ancestry 
revered and honored when the ancestors of 
England's haughtiest nobles and America's 
proudest families, nay, when the ancestors of 
some crowned monarchs, were savages roam- 
ing the forests, or robbers desolating domains 
and burning villages ! 



202 HEROES AND MARTYRS OF I]SrYE:NrTION 

It has only been within the past two hundred 
years that the progress of iron manufacture 
has been rapid^ and that its uses have become 
well-nigh universal. This is owing to the fact 
that it was not until the seventeenth century 
that Dud Dudley discovered the art of smelt- 
ing iron with pit-coal. In all the preceding 
centuries iron had been slowly smelted with 
charcoal. It was Dudley's invention which 
began the revolution in iron manufacture^ by 
which it has truly become^ as John Locke 
called it^ " the author of plenty/' in our own 
age. 



^^W'^ OF- HISTORY 

By GEORGE MAKEPEACE TOWLE. 

HandBomely Illustrated. Price per vol., $1.25. Sets in neat bozen 

VASCO DA GAMA: 

HIS VOYAGES AND ADVENTURES. 
*' Da Gama'e history Is full of striking adventures, thrilling incidents, and 

Eerilous situations; and Mr. Towle, while not sacrificing historical accuracy, 
as so okilfuliy used his materials, that we have a charmingly romantic tale." 
— Rubral New- Yorker, 

PIZ ARRO: 
HIS ADVENTURES AND CONQUESTS. 
** No hero of romance possesses greater power to charm the youthful reader 
than the conqueror of Peru. Not even King Arthur, or Thaddeus of War- 
saw, has the power to captivate the imagination of the growing boy. Mr. 
Towle has handled his subject in a glowing but truthful manner; and wc 
venture the assertion, that, wer-i our children led to read such books as this, 
the taste for unwholesome, exciting, wrong-teaching boys' books — dime 
novels in books' clothing — would be greatly diminished, to the great gain of 
mental force and moral purpose in the rising generation." — Chicago Alliance. 

MAGELLAN; 

OR, THE FIRST VOYAGE ROUND THE WORLD. 

*♦ What more of romantic and spirited adventures any bright boy coold 
want than is to be found in this series of historical biography, it is difficult 
to imagine. This volume is written in a most sprightly manner; and th© 
life of its hero, Fernan Magellan, with its rapid stride from the softness of 
a petted youth to the sturdy courage and persevering fortitude of manikood, 
makes a tale of marvellous fascination." — Christian Union. 

MARCO POLO: 

HIS TRAVELS AND ADVENTURES. 
"The story of the adventurous Venetian, who six hundred years ago pena 
trated into India and Cathay and Thibet and Abyssinia, is pleasantly and 
clearly told; and nothing better can be put into the hands of th(Q scliool boy 
or girl than this series of the records of noted travellers. The heroism dis- 
played by these men was certainly as great as that ever shown by conquering 
warrior; and it was exercised in a far nobler cause, — the cause of knowledge 
and diflcovery, which has made the nineteenth century what it i&" ^Graphic. 

RALEGH: 

HIS EXPLOITS AND VOYAGES. 

•'This belongs to the * Young Folks' Heroes of History * series, and deals 
with a greater and more interesting man than any of its predecessors. With 
all the black spots on his Tame, there are few more brilliant and striking 
figures in English history than the soldier, sailor, courtier, author, and ex. 
plorer. Sir Walter Ralegh. Even at this distance of time, more than two 
hundred and fifty years after his head fell on the scaffold, we cannot read hia 
Btory without emotion. It is graphically written, and is pleasant reading, 
Rot only for young folks, but for old folks with young hearts." — IFoanan'* 
Journal. 

DRAKE: 
THE SEA-LION OF DEVON. 

Drake wap the fc^-emost sea-captain of his age, the first English admiral 
to send a ship completely round the world, the hero of the magnifieonl 
victory which the English won over the Invincible Armada. His caieer wai 
itirring bold, and adventurous, from early youth to old age. 

LEE AND SHEPAED, Publishers, Boston. 



y OUNG F OLKS' -! 

B QQKS OF Travel 

DRIFTING ROUND THE WORLD; A Boy's Adventures by 

Sea and Land 
By Capt. Charles W. Hall, author of " Adrift in the Ice-Fields," " The 
Great Bonanza," etc. With numerous full-page and letter-press illustra- 
tions. Royal 8vo. Handsome cover. $1.75. Cloth, gilt, $2.50. 
** Out of the beaten track" in its course of travel, record of adventures, 
and descriptions of life in Greenland, Labrador, Ireland, Scotland, England, 
France, Holland, Russia, Asia, Siberia, and Alaska. Its hero is young, bold, 
aad adventurous ; and the book is in every way interesting and attractive. 

EDWARD GREEY'S JAPANESE SERIES 
YOUNG AMERICANS IN JAPAN ; or, The Adventures of the 
Jewett Family and their Friend Oto Nambo 

With 170 full-page and letter-press illustrations. Royal 8vo, 7 x 9I inches^ 
Handsomely illuminated cover. $1.75. Cloth, black and gold, $2.50. 
This story, though essentially a work of fiction, is filled with interesting and 

truthful descriptions of the curious ways of living' of the good people of the 

land of the rismg sun. 

THE WONDERFUL CITY OF TOKIO ; or, The Further Ad- 
ventures of the Jewett Family and their Friend Oto Nambo 

With 169 illustrations. Royal 8vo, 7 x 95 inches. With cover in gold and 
. colors, designed by the author. $1.75. Cloth, black and gold, $2.50. 

*' A book full of delightful information. The author has the happy gift of 
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mostly drawn by a Japanese artist, and are very unique." — Chicago Herald. 

THE BEAR WORSHIPPERS OF YEZO AND THE ISLAND 
OF KARAFUTO; being the further Adventures of the 
Jewett Family and their Friend Oto Nambo 

x8o illustrations. Boards, $1.75. Cloth, $2.50. 

Graphic pen and pencil pictures of the remarkable bearded people who livft 
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give queer pictures of a queer people, who have been seldom visited. 

HARRY W. FRENCHES BOOKS 
OUR BOYS IN INDIA 

The wanderings of two young Americans in Hindustan, with their exciting 

adventures on the sacred rivers and wild mountains. With 145 illustrations. 

Royal Svo, 7 x 95 inches. Bound in emblematic covers of Oriental design, 

$1.75. Cloth, black and gold, $2.50. 

While it has all the expting interest of a romance, it is remarkably vivid ia 
its pictures of manners and customs in the land of the Hindu. The illustra- 
tions are many and excellent. 

OUR BOYS IN CHINA 

The adventures of two young Americans, wrecked in the China Sea on their 

return from India, with their strange wanderings through the Chinese 

Empire. 188 illustrations. Boards, ornamental covers in colors and gold, 

$1.75. Cloth, $2.50. 

This gives the further adventures of" Our Boys" of India fame in the land 
©f Teas and Queues. 



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L JISTORICAL ROOKS « • * ♦ 
. • • • FOR yOUNG PEOPLE 



Young Folks" History of the United States 

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** It is not a history told in the third person, nor an historical novel for young 
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such and such things under such and such circumstances; but it is the genuine 
description given by the persons who experienced the things they described in 
letters written home." — Montpelier Journal, 

The Nation in a Nutshell 

By George Makepeace Tovvle, author of " Heroes of History," " Young 
Folks* History of England," " Young Folks' History of Ireland," etc. 
Price 50 cents. 

" To tell the story of a nation like ours in a nutshell, requires a peculiar 
faculty for selecting, condensing, and philosophizing. The brevity with which 
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Young People's History, of England 

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Ha ndbook of En gl ish History 

Based on ** Lectures on English History,** by the late M. J. Guest, and 
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" It approaches nearer perfection than anything in the line we have seen. 

It is succinct, accurate, and delightful." — Hartford Evening Post. 

Youn g People's History of Ireland 

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England," '* Young Folks' Heroes of History," etc. With an introduction 

by John Boyle O'Reilly. Cloth, illustrated. $1.50^ 

** The history is like a novel, increasing in interest to the very end, and 

terminating at the most interesting period of the whole; and the reader lays 

down the book a moment in enthusiastic admiration for a people who have 

endured so much, and yet have retained so many admirable characteristics." — 

N.y. World. 



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W HITE B LACK AND QOLD gERlES 

On fine paper, profusely illustrated, and bound in white, black, and gol4, 

with new and original dies, making very attractive books 

Per uolume, $1.50 New edition 

HEROES OF THE CRUSADES By Amanda M. Douglas 

With 50 full-pag-e illustrations by Gustave Dore 

** This work is an accurate and exceeding^ly interesting history of the 
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up the Feudal System, and extend the influence of the Christian civiliza- 
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heroism of tlie Crusaders, and the 50 full-page illustrations add greatly 
to its value and interest." 

ADVENTURES OF A CHINAMAN By Jules Verne 
50 full-page illustrations 

" In this volume he gives a full rein to his lively fancy, and the result is a 
book that will compare with any of his preceding works in the matter of 
pleasure to be derived from its pages. The Flowery Kingdom offers a fertile 
field for a writer such as he is, and he has made it the scene of incidents that 
show his fertility of invention, his k^en sense of humor, and his faculty for 
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only designed to amuse." — Budget. 

FIGHTING PHIL The Life of Gen. Philip H. Sheridan, by 
Headlev With full-page ilhistrations 

*' The present volume is one of the most successful that the author has 
produced. It is the life-record of a brave and good man, who was honored, 
admired, and respected. Little Phil Sheridan endeared himself to the hearts 
of a nation whose offspiing should learn the story of his life. The wortc 
is very handsomely printed, illustrated and boimd, and, while it is one of the 
most desirable gifts for a boy, it is a thoroughly historical and readable work, 
suitable for all who wish to learn the facts in the career of a noble American 
hero." — Atnericaii Hebretu. 

PERSEVERANCE ISLAND or The Robinson Crusoe of 
THE Nineteenth Century By Douglas Frazar With full-page illus- 
trations 

" It is an admirably told story, full to repletion of the most exciting adven- 
ture. Its author was cast away alone upon a desolate island in mid-ocean, 
and all his shipmates lost. The writing is a history of his life and adventures. 
This history was launched in the balloon, and reached civilization and the 
public in the manner specified. The old Robinson Crusoe was a bungler, but 
this modern specimen was an adept in all mechanical contrivance, and the 
young reader will be not only entertained, but instructed, in the chapters. 
How he prepared fresh water, how he made gunpowder, lucifer matches, 
edged tools, built houses and boats, is graphically told in these pages." 
— Intcr-Occau. 

OUR STANDARD-BEARER Oliver Optic's Life of Gen. 

U. S. Gr.\nt With full-page illustrations 

" This volume is specially adapted to the youth of the country, but is 
equally, if not more, interesting to those of maturer years. It is just such a 
book as will be a favorite in the library of any household, be that library large 
or small. It gives fine entertainment and capital instruction. The scenes 
and incidents of the great general's infancy, childhood, and youth are told in 
a pleasant way, while tlie later incidents of his eventful career are described 
with a faithful and graphic pen." — Keokuk Democrat. 

LIVES OF THE PRESIDENTS From Washington to 

Cleveland With new portraits. 

A very interesting series of short biographies of the Presidents, describing 
ihe principal events of each administration in an entertaining and readable 
manner, giving just the information that is needed to convey, in brief, the 
history of the United Slates, and affording in compact form a ready reference 
b.iol: m 'nfiinil nrfai-s. 

*«" ^oid by all booksellers, or sent by mail on receipt 0/ price 

LEE AND SHEPARD Publishers Bostoai 



QTORIES H MERICAN V 

0^^oF^±.il V HISTORY 



Three Books. Clothi illustrated. Price for each book, 50 cents. 
30 cents net By mail, 35 cents 

First Series 
STORIES OF AMERICAN HISTORY. By N. S. Dodge 
As a reading-book for the younger classes in public and private schools 
(by many of which it has been adopted), it will be found of great value. 

** Nobody knows better than the author how to make a good story out 
of even the driest matters of fact. . . . Here are twenty-two of siich 
stories; and tliey are chosen with a degree of skill which of itself would 
indicate its author's litness for the task, even if we had no other evidence 
of that fitness. There is no better, purer, more interesting, or more in. 
structive book for boys." — JVezu- York Hearth a?id Home 

Second Series 

NOBLE DEEDS OF OUR FATHERS. As Told by Soldiers 
of the Revolution gathered around the Old Bell of Independence. 
Revised and adapted from Henry C. Watson 

"Every phase of the struggle is presented, and the moral and 
religious character of our forefathers, even when engaged in deadly con- 
flict, is depicted witli great clearness. The young reader — indeed, older 
readers will like the stories — will be deeply interested in the story of 
I^afayette's return to this country, of reminiscences of Washington, of 
the night before the battle of Brandy wine, of the first prayer in Congress, 
of the patriotic women of that day, stories of adventure regarding Gen. 
Wayne, the traitor Arnold, the massacre of Wyoming, the capture of 
Gen. Prescott, and in other narratives equally interesting and important.'* 
— Norzvich Bulletin 

Third Series 

THE BOSTON TEA PARTY and other Stories of 
the Revolution. Relating many Daring Deeds of the Old 
Heroes. By Henry C. Watson 

"The tales are full of interesting material, they are told in a very 
graphic manner, and give many incidents of personal daring and descrip- 
tions of famous men and places. General Putnam's escape, the fight at 
Concord, the patriotism of Mr. Borden, the battle of Bunker Hill, the 
battle of Oriskany, the mutiny at Morristown and the exploits of Peter 
Francisco are among the subjects. Books such as this have a practical 
value and an uVideniable charm. History will never be dull so hmg as 
it is presented with so much brightness and color." — Philadelphia Record, 

From David S. Keck, A.M., Sxcpt. of Berks County Schools. 
I received a package containing " Stories of American History," 
*' Boston Tea Party," and '* Noble Deeds of our Forefathers," and am 
ready to say that the stories are all historical, and the matter is presented 
in such simple and pleasing style that it will arouse patriotic feelings in 
the heart of every American, and at the same time awaken a desire to 
study history. I wish 1 could find s?t least a dozen of the books named 
in every one of my schools, for I am positive they would be productive 
of viuch good. 

<-EE AND SHEPARD, Publishers, Boston 



I HE AND « • ,^^W 



EE AND « • .-^ ..^fY-FIVE GEN/ - « 

* JUVENILES 

Comprising new editions of the following popular Juveniles Bound in 
best English cloth bright colors Any volume sold separately 

CHARLEY AND EVA STORIES By Miss L. C. Thukstom 
How Charley Roberts became a Man 
How Eva Roberts gained her Education 
Home in the West 
Khildren of Amity Court 

Miss Thurston writes with a purpose. She is an admirer of manly boys 
and womanly girls, and so carries her characters through scenes and 
situations that elevate and purify. The books are by no means slow, 
being full of adventures. 

GOLDEN PROVERB SERIES By Mrs. M. E. Bradlby 
and Miss Kate J. Neely 
Birds of a Feather 

Fine Feathers do not make Fine Birds 
Handsome is that Handsome Does 
A Wrong Confessed is Half Redressed 
One Good Turn deserves Another 
Actions Speak Louder than Words 

Two capital story-tellers, ** birds of a feather," have flocked together, 
and produced from six old proverbs six as bright and taking story-books 
as ever gladdened the hearts of Young America; showing, indeed, that 
" handsome is that handsome does." 

GOLDEN RULE STORIES By Mrs S. C. B. Samuel* 
The Golden Rule Nettie's Trial 

The Shipwrecked Girl The Burning Prairie 

Under the Sea The Smuggler's Cave 

CELESTA'S LIBRARY for Boys and Girls 
Celesta A Thousand a Year 

Crooked and Straight Abel Grey 

The Crook Straightened May Coverley 

Mrs. Samuels has written many attractive books. The scenes and 
incidents she portrays are full of life, action, and interest, and decidedly 
wholesome and instructive. 
BALT-WATER DICK STORIES By May Mannering 
Climbing the Rope The Little Spaniard 

Billy Grimes's Favorite Salt-Water Dick 

Cruise of the Dashaway Little Maid of Oxbow 

Not all tales of the sea, as the title of the series would imply, but stories 
of many lands by a lady who has been a great traveller, and tells what she 
has seen, in a captivating way. 
UPSIDE-DOWN STORIES By Rosa Abbott 
Jack of all Trades Upside Down 

Alexis the Runaway The Young Detective 

Tommy Hickup The Pinks and Blues 

VACATION STORIES for Boys and Girls 6 vols. 

Illustrated 
Worth not Wealth Karl Keigler or The Fortunes 

Country Life of a Foundling 

The Charm Walter Seyton 

Holidays at Chestnut Hill 

GREAT ROSY DIAMOND STORIES for Girls 

6 vols. Illustrated 
The Great Rosy Diamond Minnie or The Little Womao 

Daisy or The Fairy Sptciacles The Angel Children 
Violet a Fairy Story Little Blossom's Reward 

%uld by nH booksellers and sent by mail posfnnid on receipt of prl§9 

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